In Case You Missed It – July 1, 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

"Imagine there is no public schooling and a candidate in 2024 runs on a great new idea: “Let’s provide universal free K-12 for all students and tax ourselves to pay for it!” What was established 150 years ago would seem outrageous today, especially in an environment strongly influenced by wealthy donors who want to do away with public programs. We take for granted the fact that in all of our communities, we have tuition-free schools that welcome all of our children—it’s a natural feature of the landscape. The system isn’t perfect and often disappoints us. But we need to remember that the core features of this system—that it is publicly governed, taxpayer-supported, open access, and used to advance the common good—are actually pretty remarkable. Moreover, our public education system has made our country far more equal than it was in the past. If we dismantle public education, it would be difficult if not impossible to bring it back." -- from NEA Today, What do Book Bans and Vouchers Have in Common?

THE WAR AGAINST PUBLIC SCHOOLS

What do Book Bans and Vouchers Have in Common?

A new book from the Have You Heard podcasters...coming on July 2.

From NEA Today

In their latest book The Education Wars, journalist Jennifer Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider explain the sudden obsession with race and gender in schools and the ascendancy of book bans. It offers analysis of school vouchers and the impact they’ll have on school finances and explores the movement for “parents’ rights,” explaining the rights that students and taxpayers also have.

NEA Today spoke to Berkshire and Schneider about the new book and some of the alarming findings. We also asked about the path forward...

...Can a family with an LGBTQ+ student attend private school with a voucher? What about students with disabilities?...

JB and JS: LGBTQ+ students would be embraced by a Quaker school, but those are a small percentage of the faith-based schools that dominate the private sector. Most LGBTQ+ students would face resistance at a religious private school or, worse, intolerance and exclusion. So vouchers may offer options, but they don’t protect students’ rights. They can deny admission and equal treatment based on their “religious freedom.”

Students with disabilities will face similar obstacles. We recently did a podcast on threats to special education in a voucher system. A mother of a student with disabilities from Tennessee read 20 different rejection letters she got from 20 different schools. In a privatized system, a school can say “no, we don’t have the facilities or the personnel to accommodate your child.” And there will be no incentive to do so. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which turns 50 next year, would not apply as it does in our public school system. Again, vouchers provide some options, but no rights, which leaves a large population with no options.

READING WARS

The Comprehension Problem with New Reading Programs: Ignoring the Books Children LIKE to Read!

The Science of Reading leaves out one essential aspect...the joy of reading.

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

I’m not a gambler, but if I were, I’d bet that a lot of parents whose elementary school-age children are getting explicit phonics instruction, memorizing rules, and who can define words like diphthong and schwa will be disappointed when their children get to high school and couldn’t care less about reading.

New reading programs promising the Science of Reading don’t cover what children need to become good readers. What’s missing are reading comprehension and the incentive to read because it’s fun and interesting.

When critics of public schools and teachers debate how to teach reading comprehension today, they chatter about knowledge building (of course, previous knowledge is important) and raise questions like, should you teach a child about the main idea? (of course, you should), as if teachers haven’t taught children to read (and write) in the past.

The difference is that, today, they often ignore the main star: books children like to read.

VIRTUAL CHARTER REPORT

New Indiana virtual charter school report shows $60M in funding for 2022-23

The annual report also gives other data on class sizes and teacher-student ratios across the state’s seven virtual charters.

From the Indiana Capital Chronicle

More than $60 million in state tuition funding went to Indiana’s virtual schools during the 2022-23 academic year, according to a new report.

In all, those dollars covered roughly 8,500 students — a majority of those attending a handful of virtual charter schools operating in the state.

Each year, virtual charter schools are required by law to submit data to the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) with the number of student-teacher meetings conducted in-person or via video conference, classroom size, the ratio of teachers per class, as well as state funding totals.

The newest numbers were submitted to the Indiana State Budget Committee last week.

POLITICS AND EDUCATION

New Hampshire: Why the GOP Is Determined to Destroy Public Schools

This is an important article for everyone to read, no matter where you live. It explains succinctly the true goals of the privatization movement.

From Diane Ravitch

A responsible citizen is an informed citizen, and that appears to be the problem today. Too many people interested in power instead of governing don’t want a truly informed public. Instead, they want enough of the public spoon fed “alternative facts,” conspiracy theories, and outright lies to ensure they retain power although they have views that are both harmful to the majority of citizens and allow the tyranny of the minority to overturn the will of the majority.

At the heart of the minority’s transformation plan is the destruction of the public school system.

Indiana’s attempt to take shortcuts on education is costing us.

It’s time for the State to stop trying to privatize schools and start investing in our public school system.

From Masson's Blog: A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Ball State economist, Michael Hicks, has a column about Democratic run areas of the country getting richer while Republican run areas are getting poorer. He notes that the U.S. is seeing its best economic performance in the last half century but the benefits are not being distributed uniformly. He doesn’t lay the blame on one party or another because some of the underlying reasons were a long time in the making. But he does underscore the significance of educational attainment in the dynamic.

It is difficult to lay the blame for worsening economic conditions at the feet of one party or the other. For the past 50 years, there was considerable overlap in state policies, so conservative Democratic states behaved a lot like more progressive Republican states in tax, education and economic development policy.

...The 15 states that have seen the biggest relative drop in educational attainment are all solidly Republican states—and poor. Indiana ranks 10th on this list...

LOCAL NEWS

FWCS board unanimously approves $55M loan for Snider stadium

From WANE.com

At Monday’s meeting, the Fort Wayne Community Schools Board welcomed a new member and approved financing of the upcoming Snider football stadium.

The FWCS Board unanimously approved the financing of the new Snider Stadium alongside other improvements in the district. The cost will come as a loan of $55,650,000 from general obligation bonds and building corporation property tax first mortgage bonds.

FWCS Board President Maria Norman assures that the project will not raise property taxes.

Snider’s new 4,000-seat stadium will utilize a large portion of the loan. The remaining money will be used to update athletic equipment, scoreboards, and other FWCS facilities such as restrooms and offices.

^†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 – March 27, 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.

THIS WEEK

Quote of the week: "We know what works [for education]. So why don’t politicians want to do it? Simple – it’s impossible to monetize and profit from this approach the way they can with vouchers." -- Cecily Riesenberg

A SWEET LITTLE CONFLICT OF INTEREST

House speaker consults for virtual-school business

Huston's Republican-dominated Indiana General Assembly passed a budget last month that increases funding for virtual schools by 15-20% while limiting the increase of funding for real schools to 5% or less.

How much of that increase goes into Speaker Huston's pockets? How much will Speaker Huston's clients benefit from that increase?

From School Matters

Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston made headlines last year when he left his $460,000 job with the College Board after a controversy regarding legislation to restrict teaching about race. He’s now back in the news, with conflict-of-interest questions raised about his side gig as a consultant.

The Indiana Capital Chronicle reported last week that Huston is one of at least 15 legislators who report on their statements of economic interest that they serve as consultants, sometimes helping businesses that work with or are regulated by the state. Huston started his TMH Strategies Inc. about a month after he left the College Board and lists two clients: Stride Inc. and the tech company Spokenote.

Stride, formerly K12 Inc., is a for-profit provider of virtual education that reported revenue of nearly $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2022. It operates seven Indiana-based virtual public, charter and private schools as well as several private online schools that may enroll Hoosier students, according to its website.

ABOLISH CHARTER SCHOOLS

I am a Charter School Abolitionist, and You Should Be, Too

Speaking of charter schools...

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

After three decades, it should be achingly clear.

Charter schools are a terrible idea.

These types of schools have been around since 1992, a year after Minnesota passed the first law allowing certain public schools to exist under negotiated conditions (or charters).

It works kind of like this. Here are all the rules public schools have to follow in order to be funded by taxpayer dollars – they have to be run by elected school boards, have open records, accept all students from the community, etc. Now here are the tiny set of rules this one particular school has to abide by – it’s charter, if you will.

So there’s one set of rules for authentic public schools and another for each individual charter school.

This means charter schools can be governed by appointed boards of bureaucrats, they don’t have to share their records with the public who are paying the bills, they can even pocket some of that taxpayer money as profit (and in many cases they can still call themselves non-profit). And they don’t even have to accept all students! They can cherrypick whoever is easiest to teach and tell those they rejected that it’s all the result of a lottery – a lottery that they don’t have to share with anyone to prove it was impartial.

No wonder the situation has been a disastrous mess!

VOUCHERS ONLY OFFER THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE

Texas: Teacher in Amarillo Explains the Voucher Hoax

The choice is with the schools. If your child is the wrong color, doesn't get the right score on standardized tests, or doesn't behave in a certain way...if your family doesn't conform to the required configuration or support the correct religious organization, then a private school can choose to reject your child.

From Diane Ravitch

Data shows that vouchers benefit the wealthy who need it the least, hurt the disadvantaged the most, abuse taxpayer dollars, and erase the separation between church and state. Vouchers act like a discount for wealthy students already in private schools. Picture a country club that won’t allow any new members, but now their current members get to use taxpayer money to subsidize part of their dues. Not only is everyone else stuck at the public pool, but now we’re all paying for a few people to go to the country club, and we have less money to maintain or upgrade the public pool. That’s how vouchers work in the states that have them...

Vouchers only offer the illusion of choice.

Many states have tried vouchers, the data shows they failed and abused public resources. Not only do charters and private schools in Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, and Louisiana, have worse educational outcomes than public schools, but when so many programs receive public money, it’s impossible to monitor where the money goes in the same way that public schools are held accountable...

There are answers on how to actually reform education. We can follow the lead of countries like Finland that consistently rank high on international measures of reading and math skills. Finland doesn’t have vouchers. They don’t even have private schools. There, every school is public and wellfunded. Every student can get a quality education from their neighborhood school, and every student has an equal opportunity to achieve. Finland attracts the best and brightest to the teaching profession by requiring a masters degree and paying them as much as doctors or lawyers. Finnish teachers are empowered, respected, and trusted...

We know what works. So why don’t politicians want to do it? Simple – it’s impossible to monetize and profit from this approach the way they can with vouchers.

MORE TEACHING LESS TESTING ACT

This educator-turned-lawmaker wants to end the misuse of standardized testing

N.Y. Representative Jamaal Bowman thinks it's time to end the overuse and misuse of testing in the USA. We agree.

From The Answer Sheet

...On the federal level, one member of Congress says he has had enough with standardized testing. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), the former principal of a middle school in the Bronx, is introducing legislation on Thursday that seeks to change the federal law that requires the testing to allow schools to do something more useful.

The bill is called the More Teaching Less Testing Act, which is exactly what it seeks to do — allow states more flexibility in designing and administering summative tests.

It would eliminate the requirement in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act — which was a rewrite of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act — that annual statewide standardized tests in reading and math in grades 3 to 8, and once in high schools, as well as assessments once in each grade span in science for all students and annual English-language proficiency assessments in grades K-12 for all English learners. It would offer options for states to choose from — including grade-span testing, which limits the amount of times tests are given in each level of schooling — and representative sampling — and would reduce the amount of testing as well as cost.

Bowman, who in 2009 founded the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a Bronx public middle school that focused on a holistic curriculum, served as principal for a decade before winning an upset victory in the 2020 primary for the House seat he later won and has held since then.

Bowman said that he knows from experience that standardized tests don’t provide teachers with any information about their students they don’t already know and that the massive amount of test preparation robs students of quality learning time...

ALLEN COUNTY TEACHERS STAND UP FOR ALL STUDENTS

Allen County teachers sign letter against 'anti-LGBTQ' bills

Indiana lawmakers are trying to deny the existence of certain students. Our local teachers are fighting back.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

More than 100 Allen County educators signed a letter opposing three Indiana bills they say target LGBTQ families and youth.

The bills – Senate Bills 12 and 480 along with House Bill 1608 – “hurt teachers and students’ ability to focus on learning in the classroom,” according to a news release distributed by “No Hate in Our State” rally organizer Thad Gerardot.

The letter’s signatories include teachers from school districts around the county along with educators from area universities. Gerardot said many teachers volunteered for the March 11 rally and that teachers they knew distributed the letter to other educators.

The letter said that data from The Trevor Project shows 45% of Hoosier youth considered suicide last year.

“Unless kids feel safe, what we as educators teach them won’t matter,” the letter stated.

FLORIDA EXPANDS THE DENIAL OF REALITY THROUGH 12TH GRADE

Florida: State Education Board Will Extend “Don’t Say Gay” Through 12th Grade

"...it is a slap in the face to gay families in Florida, as well as to people who are comfortable with discussions of reality."

From Diane Ravitch

Florida’s state board of education voted to expand its ban on any mention of LGBT topics through 12th grade, effectively censoring the topic for all grades. This move is intended to protect the rights of parents who don’t want their children to learn that gay people exist, but it is a slap in the face to gay families in Florida, as well as to people who are comfortable with discussions of reality.

The DeSantis administration next month could effectively bar all public school teachers from providing classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity, a move that would expand Florida’s controversial 2022 law and go even further than the legislation Republican lawmakers are pushing in Tallahassee this spring.

A proposed State Board of Education rule, scheduled for a vote next month, says teachers in grades 4 to 12 “shall not intentionally provide classroom instruction” on either topic, expanding the prohibition in last year’s law that critics dubbed “don’t say gay.” Teachers who violate the rule could face suspension or revocation of their teaching licenses.

**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 – August 1, 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

Fort Wayne Community Schools approved corporate sponsorship with a local credit union, public schools around the country are keeping their virtual programs, and the right-wing culture wars are still targeting public schools and their libraries.

COMMERCIAL SPONSORSHIPS IN FWCS

Amp Lab lands Fort Wayne Community Schools' first corporate sponsorship for naming rights

Make no mistake, inadequate funding from the state of Indiana and the low priority of public education and children in general, are reasons that school systems have to go begging for corporate sponsors.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Fort Wayne Community Schools board approved an unprecedented request Monday – naming rights to a commercial entity.

The seven members cemented the $625,000 sponsorship with 3Rivers Federal Credit Union about two weeks before the launch of Amp Lab at Electric Works, the district’s immersive half-day program for juniors and seniors. In exchange, one of Amp Lab’s four educational studios will be named for the credit union for five years.

Steve Corona, a board member, stressed the significance of the announcement, saying the partnership illustrates Superintendent Mark Daniel’s promise to engage businesses.

“We know that it costs money to run Amp Lab,” Corona said. “And we need our business partners to do that.”

ONLINE SCHOOL STILL NOT AS GOOD AS IN PERSON

Andrea Gabor: Online Schooling Is a Very Bad Idea

Many schools have opted to keep their virtual programs that were developed during the pandemic.

From Diane Ravitch

Nearly all of the 20 largest US school districts will offer online schooling options this fall. Over half of them will be offering more full-time virtual school programs than they did before the pandemic. The trend seems likely to continue or accelerate, according to an analysis by Chalkbeat.

That’s a problem. School closings over the last two years have inflicted severe educational and emotional damage on American students. Schools should now be focusing on creative ways to fill classrooms, socialize kids and convey the joy of collaborative learning — not on providing opportunities to stay home.

Historically, various forces have pushed for online education — not all of them focused on improving education. These include: the quest for cheaper, more efficient modes of schooling; the push to limit the influence of teachers unions by concentrating virtual teachers in non-union states; and a variety of medical and social factors that lead some students and families to prefer online learning.

THE CULTURE WARS

Right-wing groups are continuing their attack on public schools and their libraries.

Georgia: Will the State Ban Teaching the Truth About Racism?

From Diane Ravitch

In Florida, lawmakers are seeking to make it illegal for white students to feel discomfort. In Oklahoma, a recent proposed bill would allow parents to sue teachers for $10,000 per day if they discuss any topic that does not perfectly align with a student’s closely held religious belief.

The House and Senate bills here in Georgia do not mention critical race theory by name. But they are part of this growing ideological trend to manufacture and capitalize on outrage as it relates to what students are taught or not taught in schools — the front line, as it were, of the nation’s culture war.

While there have long been efforts from the political right to censor curriculum and ban books in U.S. schools, these efforts have reached a fever pitch over the past two years. First, parents shouted at local school boards to ignore medical science and reopen schools as well as remove mask mandates during the height of the pandemic. Then, concerns over the teaching of CRT began to spring up across the country.

Librarians Are Targets for Fascists

[emphasis in original]

From Diane Ravitch

This essay is dedicated to librarians and library staff across America, and to a family member who worked as a library clerk in an elementary school for many years.

“It felt like a knife in my heart,” said Audrey Wilson-Youngblood, a Texas library services coordinator, of the flood of accusations from parents that she and other library staff in the Keller Independent School District harmed students by having books on LGBTQ themes in their collections.

Across the country, librarians in school and municipal libraries feel that knife being turned. Activist parents, sometimes working in conjunction with GOP politicians or right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty, are waging an authoritarian-style assault on libraries and librarians.

**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 weekly except holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – October 11, 2021

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

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

THIS WEEK

Critical Race theory, teacher shortages, charters draining funds for public education...it's all here this week.

TEACHER SHORTAGE

There's a nationwide teacher shortage...and the pandemic has made it worse. Teachers are retiring early, leaving the profession, and there aren't enough new teachers in the pipeline to replace them all. The usual teaching areas are the worse...special education and math.

Before the pandemic, the Indiana anti-public education majority in the legislature was making arrangements to lower the qualifications for teaching in the state's public schools. Now that the shortage is growing, there will undoubtedly be more "emergency requirements" that will be enacted. At the same time, the federal government is cracking down on poorly trained special ed teachers.

Top Five Actions to Stop the Teacher Exodus During COVID and Beyond

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, schools across the United States are on the brink of collapse.

There is a classroom teacher shortage.

There is a substitute teacher shortage.

There is a bus driver shortage.

There is a special education aide shortage.

The people we depend on to staff our public schools are running away in droves.

It’s a clear supply and demand issue that calls for deep structural changes.

However, it’s not really new. We’ve needed better compensation and treatment of school employees for decades, but our policymakers have been extremely resistant to do anything about it.

Instead, they’ve given away our tax dollars to corporations through charter and voucher school initiatives. They’ve siphoned funding to pay for more standardized testing, teaching to the test, and ed tech software.

But the people who actually do the work of educating our youth. We’ve left them out in the cold.

Indiana will end emergency permits for special education teachers next year

Perhaps it’s time for Indiana to consider teaching students receiving special services more thoughtfully.

From Chalkbeat*

Indiana will stop issuing emergency permits for special education teachers after this school year, ending a long-standing practice that helps schools staff hard-to-fill positions.

The change, made to comply with federal regulations, comes as school districts grapple with staffing shortages worsened by COVID-19 and affects around 1,200 educators who will need to take additional steps toward their full licensure in order to stay in the classroom.

State officials informed schools in June about the looming cutoff. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 tightened rules for special education teachers, prohibiting them from having licensure requirements waived on an “emergency, temporary, or provisional basis.”

96% of districts report teacher shortages: Number highest in 7 years, annual survey says

"The top six shortage areas remain the same, but there’s been a shift in the rankings. Those top areas are special education, math, science, elementary education, foreign languages and English."

From the Terre Haute Tribune Star

According to an annual survey, 96.5% of participating Indiana school districts reported teacher shortages, the highest in the seven years of surveying school corporations.

Disciplines most affected are special education and math, according to the survey done by Indiana State University’s Bayh College of Education.

The 2021-22 survey had 199 participating school districts, including some charter schools; Indiana has 290 public school corporations.

“This year and last have brought more challenges than many previous [years],” said Terry McDaniel, ISU professor of educational leadership, who oversees the survey. “As a result, we are seeing educators being burned-out, scared, disappointed, and no longer enjoying the profession. We are also seeing fewer people entering the profession.”

FWCS STAFF SHORTAGES

Stressed FWCS to consider e-learning

Locally, Fort Wayne Community Schools is making plans to deal with "rolling blackouts" due to staff shortages including transportation, food service, custodial, and others in addition to instructional staff.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Staffing shortages are stressing Fort Wayne Community Schools to the point that district leaders are brainstorming remote-learning scenarios, Superintendent Mark Daniel said Tuesday.

The almost 30,000-student district is stretched thin across all departments, including food service and transportation, which is 72 bus drivers short, Daniel said. Further, he said, FWCS faces "major shortages" with substitute teachers.

He warned the audience watching his Facebook Live update that changes are likely looming.

"There will come a time when we cannot physically accommodate every student every day because we don't have personnel," Daniel said. "We've been stretching and stretching, and I think now we're to chewing gum on trying to fix things."

CRT

OH: Protect Our Children From Everything

The list of things that the movement against so-called "critical race theory" wants to prohibit is extensive and includes everything every right-wing, anti-public education, religious right activist has ever wanted including sex education, values clarification, social-emotional learning, and diversity training -- not to mention accurately teaching the history of race relations in the United States.

From Curmudgucation

CRT continues to be a catch-all for every complaint about public education ever, while also trying to generate discontent with public education, the better to fuel new attempts to simply get rid of it and replace it with a good-luck-you're-on-your-own marketplace even as taxpayers send money to religious schools. From complaints about critical race theory (which came after complaints about closed schools and mask mandates) we've moved on to the old refrain against everything that schools might teach that some conservative christianists disapprove of.

It would be a mistake for public education to take the stance that parents should shut up and sit down, but it would also be a mistake to let a small, vocal, albeit well-organized group intent on turning the clock back to a whitewashed version of 1955 decide what schools should do. The notion, as expressed by Mike Pompeo, that "parents should decide what their children are taught in school" is one more dismissal of educator expertise and a sure recipe for educational stagnation. I absolutely get the visceral fear of having your children grow up to be something foreign to your own beliefs and experience, but I don't get the notion that "don't let me children learn anything that I don't know myself" is a solution to anything. This is not freedom; this is a clumsy attempt to tie freedom up and gag it. Plus, I'll bet dollars to donuts that even as I type this, children are online googling items from the list of forbidden subjects. Good luck with that opt out thing.

CHARTER EXPANSION

Texas: The District Needed Funding for More Schools. Instead, the Commissioner Opened More Charter Schools

In Texas, much-needed public school funds have been diverted to charter schools.

From Diane Ravitch

Enrollments in the Cleveland Independent School District in Texas was growing rapidly. Voters passed bond issues, but it wasn’t enough. The superindent turned to the state for help. Sadly, Governor Gregg Abbott and his hand-picked State Commissioner Mike Morath are obsessed with charters, despite the fact that their academic results are below those of public schools.

Here is the sad story of Abbott and Morath’s devotion to charter expansion.

REMOTE LEARNING

Nora de la Cour: For-Profit Remote Learning is a Disaster

From Diane Ravitch

Nora de la Cour is a high school teacher and writer. This article about the sham of for-profit remote instruction appeared in Jacobin. Study after study has demonstrated the poor results of virtual instruction, but the research does not deter the greedy entrepreneurs who see the profit in virtual charter schools. You may recall the recent press release from the National Alliance for Charter Schools about how charter schools increased enrollment by 250,000 during the pandemic; what the press release didn’t admit was that the “increase” was due entirely to growth in virtual charter enrollments, which may turn out to be a temporary response to the pandemic.

De la Cour sees the push for for-profit remote learning as another front in the privatization movement.

She begins...

UNIONS

Emails and Vampires [Updated]

Curmudgucation blogger, Peter Greene, has updated this post from three years ago about the Janus v. AFSCME decision. Sadly, it's still having an impact on teachers.

Although imperfect, teachers need their unions.

From Curmudgucation

It's almost as if this whole thing isn't about teachers' First Amendment right at all.

It's almost as if this was just a ploy to bust up the unions and make sure that teachers had even less voice in the world of education. It's almost as if this was a way to drain funds from the Democratic Party...

[Updates: First, I can confirm that the emails are hitting Pennsylvania, too, as confirmed by one in my wife's school email spam box that arrived yesterday.

Second, My Pay My Say has its very own Facebook page, so if you wanted to share some thoughts with them about their campaign, that would be a place to do it.]

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – July 19, 2021

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

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

TESTS SHOW US WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW

As usual, standardized tests show us what we already know. In this case, that the ongoing pandemic has hurt children's test scores and hurt the test scores of poor children worse than those with more resources.

It's time we end our obsession with tests and focus on the needs of children. We've known for decades that students in poverty, often attending schools that are poorly resourced, score lower on standardized tests. That's not due to poor teaching but to poverty itself. The main target should be alleviating the poverty of children living in low-income homes, approximately 1 out of every 6 American children, not shaming children, schools, and districts for the number of low-income students they educate.

ILEARN results show pandemic had an impact

From School Matters

COVID-19 clearly impacted learning, as everyone expected it would. Between 2019 and 2021, the share of students who scored proficient on the tests declined by about 8 percentage points in English/language arts and by about 11 percentage points in math. The share of students who were proficient in both English/language arts and math declined from 37.1% to 28.6%. (The test wasn’t given in 2020).

This isn’t entirely an apples-to-apples situation, and the department cautioned against comparing 2019 and 2021 scores. For one thing, the 2019 scores included only students who were enrolled at the same school for 162 days, while the 2021 scores apparently included all students who were tested. State officials said they’re thinking of 2021 as a “new baseline” for measuring future improvement.

But it’s not surprising that test scores, overall, were lower in 2021. Schools moved online for the last two months of the 2019-20 school year, when the pandemic began. While circumstances varied by school district, many students were fully or partially online in 2020-21.

Indiana ILEARN test scores plunge unevenly

From Chalkbeat*

As education officials had warned, Indiana elementary and middle school test scores plunged this year, with only a fraction testing proficient in English and math, much fewer than two years ago.

Results of the annual ILEARN state tests released Wednesday show that 28.6% of students statewide in grades 3 through 8 tested proficient in both English and math. In 2019, the last time the test was given, 37.1% passed.

In Indianapolis Public Schools, which has a high proportion of students from struggling families, only 10% showed proficiency in both English and math.

Last spring, states debated whether testing students amid a pandemic was fair to them and schools. Indiana decided to test, and required even students learning remotely to take the annual standardized exams in person— though state lawmakers won’t punish schools for the results.

The results highlight the uneven toll that the pandemic and economic shutdown have exacted, hitting students of color and those from low-income families particularly hard. That in turn has left a wide chasm in performance between those students and their wealthier peers.

THE POLITICS OF COVID-19 STILL PLAGUING SCHOOLS

Conspiracy theories about the danger of masks are still causing trouble for America's public schools. Sadly, as the coronavirus delta variant increases its hold on the country, it's possible that masks will become necessary again. Groups of parents fueled by right-wing conspiracy theories deny that masks are effective, claim that masks cause CO2 poisoning, carry 5G antennas, or at the very least, inhibit "freedom," have been attacking school boards around the country demanding that children be allowed to go to school mask-free.

Of course, teachers are caught in the middle.

NACS board condemns threats to staff

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Northwest Allen County Schools board – which has drawn months of heated public comment that began over the mask mandate – issued a statement Wednesday condemning threats to its educators.

The statement, which board President Kent Somers first read at the June 28 meeting, asks people to demonstrate respect towards those with whom they may disagree.

“We are issuing this statement after learning that threats may have been made, or at least implied, against NACS representatives,” the board said. “To be clear, we fully support the First Amendment and the right to engage in legitimate disagreement, but we must unequivocally condemn any threat to our educators.”

SACS board votes to make masks optional

A free article from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Southwest Allen County Schools is planning a year of traditional, in-person classes where masks will be optional for all students and staff.

Masks will only be required on buses per federal order.

The five-member school board unanimously endorsed these and other changes – including welcoming school visitors again – to the district's return to classroom plan Tuesday night.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's revised guidance on mask-wearing in schools wasn't mentioned. The agency said Friday vaccinated teachers and students don't need to wear masks inside school buildings.

The Government Should Make Unvaccinated Students & Staff Mask Up in Schools

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

As a classroom teacher, I cannot enforce safety protocols in my school all by myself.

I can’t make students and coworkers wear masks.

I can’t require people to show me their medical records to determine with any degree of certainty who is and is not fully vaccinated.

But when it comes to Covid-19, the federal government is again throwing up its hands and leaving all safety protocols to small town government officials, local school directors, and schmucks like me.

The result is a patchwork of inconsistent and inadequate safety directives that put far too many at risk.

Here we go again.

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS - SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

Suit: Online charters bilked state of millions

The loosely regulated charter school sector has been scandal-ridden for years. The Network for Public Education has documented charter school scandals going back more than a decade and has detailed hundreds of them on their website under the title, Another Day Another Charter Scandal.

States with a large charter presence haven't paid much attention to the scandals since pro-charter donors line the campaign coffers of many legislators. Now, however, with the privatization movement emulating former Ed Secretary DeVos, and focusing more on vouchers, the charter sector is in danger of losing out to its more profitable privatization competitor. To that end, Indiana has filed suit against a couple of virtual charters for doing what charters do...pocketing taxpayer dollars.

Maybe it's time for Indiana and other states to rethink school privatization.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The leaders of two now-closed Indiana online charter schools are accused in a new lawsuit of defrauding the state of more than $150 million by padding their student enrollments and inappropriately paying money to a web of related businesses.

The lawsuit announced Monday by the Indiana attorney general's office comes almost two years after Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy shut down amid a state investigation that found the two online schools improperly claimed about 14,000 students as enrolled between 2011 and 2019, even though they had no online course activity.

The lawsuit seeks repayment of about $69 million it claims the schools wrongly received in state student enrollment payments. It also seeks $86 million that officials say the schools improperly paid to more than a dozen companies linked to them by common business officers or relatives and did so with little or no documentation.

“This massive attempt to defraud Hoosier taxpayers through complex schemes truly boggles the mind,” state Attorney General Todd Rokita said in a statement.

Indiana sues ex-virtual schools and officials for $154 million in alleged fraud

From Chalkbeat*

Indiana officials have filed suit against two defunct online charter schools and their officers for allegedly defrauding the state of $154 million by padding student enrollment.

State Attorney General Todd Rokita alleged that former officers and others related to the Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy fraudulently received and spent tuition paid to educate online students.

Last winter, a state audit covering eight years alleged that the schools dramatically inflated enrollment over their actual number of students, thus wrongly receiving more than $68 million in state payments.

A Chalkbeat investigation in 2017 found financial conflicts of interest at Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy as well as dismally low academic results. The two virtual charter schools shut down in 2019 after the allegations of enrollment fraud.

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – June 7, 2021

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

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

DOES THE PUBLIC WANT "CHOICE"?

Failing grades

We no longer care about student achievement. Now it's about "choice" and the voucher schools get to "choose" their students.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Behning and his colleagues finally have managed to establish parent "choice" -- not student achievement -- as the ultimate value.

But education historian Jack Schneider, in a Zoom session Tuesday with the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, said there was never a discussion in which the public agreed choice was the goal. It is not even what the public wants, he argued.

"What they want is fully funded neighborhood schools," said Schneider, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and a public-school parent in the state (ranked No. 1 on the Quality Counts 2021 survey). "In no case are people actually saying, 'What I want is to be able to play consumer with regard to schools.' No, what they want is a good school in their neighborhood."

He said choice creates a "false scarcity" of good schools and makes parents compete, even as those students who need the most services are set up to lose.

"It's a con -- an absolute con -- and people should be ashamed of themselves when they talk about advancing choice for the people who most need it when, in fact, those are the people who are going to be most harmed by it," Schneider said.

MORE MONEY SENT DOWN THE VOUCHER RABBIT-HOLE

For the first time, private virtual schools seek to accept vouchers in Indiana

As this article plainly shows, state-funded vouchers are being used by religious organizations despite the Indiana Constitution's prohibition in Article I, Section 6...

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

The state's Supreme Court approved the process based on the fact that the state launders the money through parents of students who attend religious schools. It's still tax dollars.

Religious schools have the right to reject students based on religion, educational needs, and sexual preferences of the students or their parents. An argument can be made that private schools ought to be allowed to choose their students, but not when they do it with public tax money.

Virtual schools have a record of failure. There's no reason to assume that private, state-funded virtual schools will be any better, especially when Indiana has a past history of allowing voucher-funded schools to escape basic accountability.

From Chalkbeat*

Two new private schools hope to join the growing wave of online education in Indiana and accept state funded-vouchers to subsidize tuition — a first for virtual schools.

Both are spin-offs of existing schools, with the virtual branches allowing them to extend their reach to students across the state. Columbus Christian School is launching FaithPrep Indiana, a virtual K-12 private school with a religious mission. The GEO Foundation, which runs several charter schools in Indiana, is creating Geo Focus Academy, also serving grades K-12 and enrolling high schoolers in college classes.

“It’s going to be an opportunity for families to really take advantage of a Christian education, and to be able to do it if they want their kids at home, if they want to travel with them,” said Columbus Christian Superintendent Kendall Wildey, who will serve as head of school for FaithPrep. “We’re still going by all the state guidelines. It’s just more flexible with people’s time.”

ATTACKS ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Jeff Bryant: The Truth Behind Attacks on Teaching “Critical Race Theory”

Diane Ravitch's blog post has a link to the article by Jeff Bryant. It is definitely worth reading. The controversy over Critical Race Theory joins vouchers and charter schools as another weapon used by privatizers to damage public education in the US.

From Diane Ravitch

Journalist Jeff Bryant writes that the motivation behind the much-discussed attacks on teaching “critical race theory” is not solely about teaching the history of racism. The goal of rightwing politicians is to silence the teaching of all subjects they don’t like. Despite the Republicans’ frequent complaints about “cancel culture,” they have embarked on a national crusade to cancel uncomfortable facts about science and history.

PUBLIC SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY

South Bend academy told to repay state $620,000

Indiana's public schools are accountable to the state for the money they receive and the students they educate. Publically funded private and voucher schools should be held to the same accountability.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Auditors reviewed enrollment and attendance figures dating to July 2018 and found dozens of students counted in the district's requests for enrollment-based funding who had never logged into South Bend's online learning platform, the South Bend Tribune reported.

School administrators admit some students' lack of participation was overlooked during enrollment counts, and the district has paid back more than $360,000.

But the district has disputed claims over some students' status during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years.

District representatives have supplied state auditors with additional student records and urged the State Board of Accounts to reconsider repayment requests for some students who may have attended in-person activities or transferred between in-person and virtual programs.

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – May 31, 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.

Illustration 31870771 © Norbert Buchholz | Dreamstime.com

SHOULD WE TEACH HISTORY...OR HIDE IT?

Some truths should make us uncomfortable

Despite the objections from some parts of the American populace, race relations in the United States have been an issue since our nation was founded. Discrimination against people of color didn't end with the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Amendments (#13, 14, and 15), or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Slavery, Slave Codes, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and continuing work for improved race relations and civil rights are all part of the American story and must be addressed by schools. We can't hide our heads in the sand and pretend that racial inequity and racial tensions don't exist.

From School Matters

Give credit to the Carmel High School students who stood up to the community members who think they shouldn’t be exposed to hard truths about race in America. That takes courage in a district where only 7% of students are Black or Hispanic.

According to the Indy Star, five students took to the mic at a recent Carmel Clay School Board meeting to defend the district’s efforts to be more inclusive about race, gender and other factors.

“They shared what it’s like to be a student in Carmel and stressed their support for the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work happening in the district,” reporter MJ Slaby wrote. “The students said it fosters understanding and helps to provide representation to all students.”

You’d think supporting equity and inclusion would be a no-brainer, but it’s not. In several Hamilton County school districts – Carmel, Hamilton Southeastern, Westfield-Washington and Noblesville – residents have turned out at board meetings to voice objections.

The Problem of Parent Centered Education

From Curmudgucation

Teacher gag laws spreading across the country are generally billed as anti-CRT, but of course their reach is much broader than that, forbidding discussion of "controversy" and outlawing any teaching that might make students "uncomfortable" or be "divisive."

The debate--well, actually not a lot of real debate because GOP legislators are using their majorities to just ram these bills through--even highlights apparent splits in the reformy astroturf community. This week the National Parents Union was in Tulsa to march in commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre (a topic that now probably can't be taught in Oklahoma) while the Parents Defending Education continue to work hard to ferret out anyone teaching controversial race issues (by which they appear to mean any race related issues at all). It's an odd apparent split between people who have worked in the edu-astro-turf world for a while.

But these groups, and the larger push for these restrictive teacher laws, actually feed one basic tenet of the privatizing push--the idea that education is a consumer good, and the real consumers are parents. Further, as the primary consumer, the argument goes, parents should get to decide how the school works, what the teachers teach, the whole operation.

There are a couple of problems with this idea of parent-centered education.

INDIANA TEACHER SALARIES

Push for $40,000 minimum teacher salary in Indiana puts pressure on rural districts

Sadly, Hoosiers didn't elect legislators who understand that better funding from the state is necessary for poor and rural districts to raise teacher pay. The legislators that were elected are more interested in giving taxpayer funds to private schools and charters than in raising teacher pay to attract and retrain teachers in those poor and rural districts.

From Chalkbeat*

After wrapping up the school year last week, kindergarten teacher Nicole Damm was right back in the classroom Monday planning summer school lessons.

She’s working this summer to help her students — but also for the extra cash. As a first-year teacher at Southern Spencer Schools, Damm made $38,000, leaving her driving a 2002 Pontiac Firebird with a leaky roof for most of the year, and unsure when she’ll be able to redo the temporary plywood floors in her fixer-upper house.

Even though she thinks teachers are underpaid, the low salary is worth it to her because this was her dream: to work in the district where she went to school and where her mom still teaches.

“I want to be the reason why kids want to come to school every day,” Damm said.

To improve pay for new teachers like Damm, Indiana lawmakers are requiring schools to try to raise minimum salaries to $40,000 by 2022-23. But that’s a particularly tough ask for rural districts, where first-year teaching salaries average just $38,343.

IPS JOINS WITH CHARTERS

Indianapolis Public Schools plans to partner with charter schools for remote option

Is it wise for IPS to enter into an agreement with virtual charter schools? The success rate for virtual charters is pathetically low compared to brick and mortar public schools.

A remote option seems to be needed since the pandemic isn’t over, but turning the job over to virtual charter schools seems like an unwise risk.

From Chalkbeat*

Instead of offering its own remote instruction next school year, Indianapolis Public Schools proposes to direct students to two local virtual charter schools.

Students who want to continue all-remote learning next year would have to transfer to Phalen Virtual Leadership Academy or Paramount Online Academy. The IPS board reviewed partnership agreements Tuesday night and plans to vote on them Thursday.

Under the partnerships, the two virtual charter schools would join the district as innovation schools, operating independently with oversight and additional funding from IPS. The agreements outline a five-year term.

FWCS NAMES NEW SCHOOL LEADERS

Leaders named for 2 new schools

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The leadership teams for two new Fort Wayne Community schools are beginning to take shape.

Superintendent Mark Daniel on Monday introduced Byron Brown as an assistant principal for Fort Wayne Virtual Academy, which launches this fall, and Riley Johnson as assistant principal of Electric Works School, which is set to open in fall 2022.

The school board approved the recommendations along with seven elementary school principal appointments.

ARE FEWER HOOSIER STUDENTS HEADING TO COLLEGE?

Indiana financial aid applications dip, pointing to fewer students heading to college

Fewer Hoosier students are filling out Federal Student Aid forms. Does that mean that fewer are going to college? If so, is it because the average college student graduates with personal debt approaching nearly $40,000?

From Chalkbeat*

Statewide completion rates fell 6% compared with last year, even after the deadline extended from April 15 to Saturday. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is required for students to receive federal and state aid and, often, to qualify for scholarships and aid from colleges and private organizations.

With fewer students applying for financial aid, experts say they expect a correlating decline in college enrollment.

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

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

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