Monday, March 25, 2024

In Case You Missed It – March 25, 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

"How do you build a world-class human? Well, you give him or her the benefits of a broad, humane, liberal arts education that confers judgment, wisdom, vision, and generosity. Greene shows us, from her own classes over three decades, exactly how that happens.

And she shows us how, under the “standards”-and-testing occupation, all that is being lost."
-- Bob Shepherd, quoted in Bob Shepherd: Gayle Green on How to Make a Human by Diane Ravitch.

THE CASE FOR NOT TAKING A WRECKING BALL TO WHAT HAS WORKED

Bob Shepherd: Gayle Green on How to Make a Human

The so-called "education reform" movement to privatize education has been decimating schools for more than two decades. Has it worked to improve student outcomes?

From Diane Ravitch
Bob Shepherd, author, editor, assessment developer, story-teller, and teacher, read a book that he loved. He hopes—and I hope—that you will love it too.

He writes:

Like much of Europe between 1939 and 1945, education in the United States, at every level, is now under occupation. The occupation is led by Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation and abetted by countless collaborators like those paid by Gates to create the puerile and failed Common Core (which was not core—that is, central, key, or foundational—and was common only in the sense of being vulgar. The bean counting under the occupation via its demonstrably invalid, pseudoscientific testing regime has made of schooling in the U.S. a diminished thing, with debased and devolved test preppy curricula (teaching materials) and pedagogy (teaching methods).

In the midst of this, Gayle Greene, a renowned Shakespeare scholar and Professor Emerita at Scripps University, has engaged in some delightful bomb throwing for the Resistance. Her weapon? A new book called Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm.

SCHOOLS NEED COUNSELORS, NOT CHAPLAINS

Hindu “Statesman” Will Move to Florida if DeSantis Signs the Bill to Let Him Guide Students

The founders chose to keep church and state separate. Using chaplains instead of counselors flies in the face of that basic American concept. States should fully fund schools so that qualified counselors can be hired.

A similar bill failed to pass in this year's Indiana General Assembly, but our guess is that it's not gone forever.

From Diane Ravitch
The Miami Herald reports:

Gov. Ron DeSantis has yet to sign a bill that would allow chaplains to offer counseling in public schools, but one colorful religious figure says he is already eager to volunteer.

He’s a self-described “Hindu statesman” from Nevada who says he would like to bring “the wisdom of ancient Sanskrit scriptures” to students — perhaps not exactly what Florida lawmakers had in mind when they approved a bill that supporters tout as a way to make up for a shortage of mental health counselors in many schools.

The offer from Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, may amount to just his latest effort to raise his organization’s profile, but it also underlines concerns from critics. Mainly, that the bill’s vague definition of “counseling” will invite religious groups — whether they are Hindu, Christian or otherwise — to use it as a door to teaching their beliefs in secular school systems.
IT'S STILL POVERTY

Will the U.S. Senate Waste this Year’s Opportunity to Reduce Child Poverty?

Child poverty is the number one cause of low student achievement in the US (and worldwide). No amount of scripted lessons, overuse, and misuse of testing, or insulting and demeaning educators will improve student outcomes. We've known this for years.

"...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.

As you read this post, you will see that there is one political party in the US that is more interested in providing tax breaks for businesses than helping poor children. Remember in November.

From Jan Resseger
One of three huge structural injustices for American children and their public schools—along with inadequate and unequally distributed school funding across the states and persistent economic and racial segregation—is our society’s outrageous level of child poverty. Right now Congress may squander a real opportunity to begin helping our society’s poorest children.

Although, on January 31, the U.S. House passed by a large margin a bipartisan compromise bill that would modestly increase the Child Tax Credit along with some business tax breaks that are a Republican priority, the bill has never been brought to the floor of the U.S. Senate for a vote.

Last week, the NY Times‘ Kayla Guo described the impasse and some of the politics: “A bipartisan bill to expand the Child Tax Credit and reinstate a set of business tax breaks has stalled in the Senate after winning overwhelming approval in the House, as Republicans balk at legislation they regard as too generous to low-income families. The delay of the $78 billion tax package has imperiled the measure’s chances and reflects the challenges of passing any major legislation in an election year. Enacting a new tax law would give President Biden and Democrats an achievement to campaign on, something that Republicans may prefer to avoid.”

The new bill to expand the Child Tax Credit is inferior to what was incorporated in the 2021, COVID relief, American Rescue Plan, which helped America’s poorest families by making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable to families without income or with such meager income that they don’t pay enough federal income taxes to cover the amount of the full Child Tax Credit. When Congress let that expansion of the Child Tax Credit expire at the end of 2021, U.S. child poverty increased by 41 percent.

SCHOOLS CAN BREAK UP ILEARN THROUGHOUT THE SCHOOL YEAR

Indiana schools get legislative green light to break up ILEARN testing throughout school year

The Indiana General Assembly offers some flexibility for schools.

From Indiana Capital Chronicle
An option for schools to divvy up portions of Indiana’s ILEARN exams was approved by state lawmakers at the end of the 2024 legislative session and will change how thousands of Hoosier students are tested.

The provision was included in House Enrolled Act 1243, an omnibus education bill filled with action items supported by the Indiana Department of Education.

The assessment plan includes what state education officials call “flexible checkpoints” for schools to administer ILEARN preparation tests in language arts and math before the typical end-of-year summative tests. A dozen other states already have similar models.

Based on a plan approved by the Indiana’s State Board of Education last summer, the “checkpoints” will consist of 20 to 25 questions and hone in on four to six state standards. The exams are designed to be administered to students about every three months, but local schools and districts can speed up testing if they wish.
**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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Monday, March 18, 2024

In Case You Missed It – March 18, 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

"Believing the pandemic brought harmful policy shifts, causing school quality to decline, [Hanushek] sees abandoning standardized test accountability as number one on his pantheon of bad moves. Teachers unions pushing for their preferred education policies seems wrong to Hanushek. After all, what do teachers know about good education? They are not trained MIT economists, like he is!

"...Learning-loss is not the big danger facing America’s students. The real danger is the likes of McKinsey, NWEA, CREDO and research leaders like Eric Hanushek."
-- Tom Ultican in Subterfuge and Learning Loss Baloney.

THE STUPIDITY OF RANKING SCHOOLS BY TEST SCORES

School Ratings and Rankings Cause Educational Redlining and Resegregation

Children, teachers, and schools are more than just the sum of their test scores.

From Jan Resseger
Having attended school in a small Montana town, where we all went to the same middle school and high school, and having parented two children who attended our neighborhood elementary and middle school and came together at our community’s only high school here in a Cleveland, Ohio inner suburb, I prefer the old and more radical solution to the whole problem of school choice driven by metrics published in the newspaper or school report cards. In fact, for the majority of families in the United States, neighborhood schools are still the norm. A system of neighborhood schools embodies the idea that parents’ responsibility is to help their children embrace the opportunities at the school where they are assigned.

As parents when my children were in elementary school, we used the PTA meetings as places to strategize about how we could better support innovations and special programs to make school more fun and challenging for all the students. A district-wide school support agency in our community provides a tutoring program for students who need extra help, and there is a community supported, district-wide music camp for a week in June when the high school orchestra director and his staff, along with a raft of graduates from the high school music program, help students from across the middle schools to prepare for joining the high school band and orchestra. People from across the school district turn out for the concert that culminates the summer music camp.

This kind of community involvement connects parents with the community’s public schools in a qualitative way. When people engage personally with a school, the teachers and the students, parents can learn so much more about a school than any metric can expose.

LEARNING LOSS BALONEY

Subterfuge and Learning Loss Baloney

There is a widespread panic over "learning loss" from the COVID-19 pandemic. Tom Ultican talks us off the ledge...

From Tultican
Crazy pants Eric Hanushek claims COVID “learning-loss” could cost American students $31 trillion in future earnings. He burst onto the education world’s consciousness with his 1981 paper, claiming “there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.” This played well with billionaires from the Walton family but had no relationship with reality. Likewise, his January 2024 “learning-loss” claims were straight up baloney.

Learning-Loss Reality

In the summer and fall of 2020, NWEA, McKinsey, CREDO and others produced unfounded analysis of looming learning-loss disaster caused by school closures. Since there was no data, summer learning-loss was used as a proxy, a bad one. In 2019, Paul von Hippel’s investigation threw great doubt on the 1982 Baltimore study that powerfully supported summer learning-loss belief. He showed using modern testing analysis, learning-loss was doubtful and in some cases, students gained during the summer. This data, used to trumpet a national education crisis, had no validity.

Unfortunately, billionaire-financed organizations, out to undermine public schools, do not care.

CLOSING SCHOOLS DOES NOT FIX THEM

John Thompson: The Failure of “Fixing” Schools by Closing Them

Did school closures help students learn?

From Diane Ravitch
John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, explains what happened when “reformers,” led by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, advocated for school closures.

He writes:

When non-educators watch Abbott Elementary, the television comedy, they are likely to find it hilarious, but I suspect it takes a teacher to fully understand the accuracy of its portrayal of the weird corporate reforms imposed on Philadelphia schools. But, recent research helps explain why many of even the most fervent advocates for test-driven, competition-driven school turnarounds now acknowledge their failures (even though they don’t apologize for them.).

The third-year premiere of Abbott gave a shout out to the respected journal, Chalkbeat. And, Chalkbeat is again reporting on failed turnarounds in Philadelphia, Tennessee, and elsewhere, as well as why former supporters of school takeovers are repudiating the reward-and-punish method for rapid, transformative change.

Chalkbeat analyzed the Philadelphia mandate, the 2010 Renaissance Initiative. It “strove to turn around about 10% of Philadelphia’s low-performing district schools by ceding them to charter organizations that promised to do better.” By 2023, however, “the Renaissance charter schools as a group mostly performed worse in standardized tests for elementary and middle schoolers than the district averages.”

Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First explained, “The goal was to prove that charters would work with any kid, not just about parents who were highly motivated to enter a lottery, and to show that a neighborhood school turned over to a charter organization would do better than if run by the school district.” But, “As far as I can tell, the data didn’t result in that.”

KENTUCKY GOP PUSHES VOUCHERS

Kentucky: GOP Passes Bill to Nullify Parts of State Constitution to Allow Vouchers

From Diane Ravitch
State Senator Tina Bojanowski, teacher and legislator (@TinaforKentucky), tweeted:

KY House passes HB2, a bill to change our Constitution to allow vouchers and charters by creating an amendment that allows future legislation to disregard SEVEN sections of our Constitution. @kyhousedems

FORT WAYNE AREA NEWS

Fort Wayne Community Schools takes 'giant step forward' with planned early childhood center

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
Fort Wayne Community Schools’ quest to build an early childhood center on the city’s southeast side marked a milestone this week that should fuel the district’s fundraising efforts for the $14.7 million project.

The school board on Monday approved options to purchase two adjacent parcels totaling 3.5 acres at the northeast intersection of Queen Street and Werling Drive near McMillen Park from the city of Fort Wayne Department of Redevelopment and Village Premier LP.

The 26,700-square-foot facility will be part of Village Premier, a multiphase mixed-use project that broke ground last year, said Joe Giant, the city’s redevelopment administrator. He told the Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission on Monday afternoon that the early childhood center will help combat the lack of child care in the city’s southeast quadrant.

Fort Wayne Community Schools prepares weapons detection expansion

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
The Fort Wayne Community Schools board agreed Monday to spend $1.4 million on weapons detection systems, but the district likely won’t expand its security screenings to every middle and high school until next academic year.

That’s because the Ceia Opengate weapons detection systems likely won’t be ready until late this academic year, said Matt Schiebel, executive director of safety and community partnerships.

Implementation is also dependent on having student advocates in place, because the devices require additional personnel, he said, referring to a new staff position funded by the Safer FWCS referendum.

FWCS piloted the weapons screening device at South Side High School, where no guns have been found this year, Schiebel said.

**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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Monday, March 11, 2024

In Case You Missed It – March 11, 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

"...unanswered questions point us at the nuance missing in the Moms for Liberty outrage and panic factory, the nuance that recognizes that reasonable intelligent people can disagree about the value of certain books. In the real world, there's a huge difference between showing six year olds graphic depictions of the ways one can use a penis and a non-graphic depiction of LGBTQ persons. There's a vast gulf between grooming some small child for sexual abuse and simply acknowledging there are some LGBTQ persons in the world (and possibly in the classroom or the homes of class members). There's a planet-seized difference between saying 'LGBTQ persons are not extraordinary or unnatural' and saying 'You should become an LGBTQ person.' And yet, in the Moms for Liberty universe, there is no difference between any of those things." -- by Peter Greene, 60 Minutes Asked Moms for Liberty The Right Questions

FIGHTING BACK AGAINST M4L

60 Minutes Asked Moms for Liberty The Right Questions

Peter Greene uses his pro-public education voice. This post takes down the misnamed "Moms for Liberty" who want to censor books.

From Peter Greene, Curmudgucation on Substack
Reporter Scott Pelley gets right to the heart of several issues. The difference between giving parents the tools to control what their own children can read (something the district also provides in spades) and trying to control what other parents can let their children read. The outrage-enhancing technique of treating isolated mistakes as proof of some widespread conspiracy.

In the midst of it all, the Moms for Liberty, with Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich finally seen in the footage from an interview they sat for way back in October of 2023.

The piece is tough on them. The parents that are set up to represent the district are Republican, conservative, combat veterans. Pelley in repeated voice overs points out that the Moms are evasive and avoid answering question but instead retreating to their talking points (he does not point out that they are seasoned political coms professionals, but he doesn't portray them as cookie-baking domestics, either). Some of the talking points were so six months ago. "We don't co-parent with the government," said the women whose demands include forcing the government to help them with the part of parenting that involves keeping an eye on what your children read and watch.

Florida District Alters Illustrations in Classic Children’s Books to Appease Moms for Liberty

Diane Ravitch joins the chorus of voices against "Moms for Liberty."

From Diane Ravitch
The local leader of Moms for Liberty was outraged! There was a book in the elementary school library that depicted a naked child! Another showed the naked butt of a goblin! What depravity!

Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria at Popular Information have the story, which actually happened in Indian River County, Florida, when Jennifer Pippen of Moms for Liberty complained about Maurice Sendak’s classic In the Night Kitchen.

Pippen said the book was “pornographic” because it showed a naked little boy in a bathtub; if you peered closely, you could see that the little boy had a penis. Shocking!

INDIANA NEWS

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #384 – A new and negative precedent

The Indiana Coalition for Public Education provides timely information about what's happening in the State General Assembly.

From Indiana Coalition for Public Education
This morning the Senate Appropriations Committee approved HB 1001 which gives state money to parents of general education students who are siblings of special education students currently getting Education Scholarship Accounts (ESA’s) to run unaccountable homeschools.

The committee’s final vote was 11-3, with Senators Qaddoura, Randolph and Yoder dissenting. Before the final vote, Senator Qaddoura, who strongly supports public education, offered an amendment to delete the entire section giving ESA accounts to siblings. His amendment failed on a party line vote, 4-10.

Senator Mishler, chair of the Appropriations Committee, has killed ESA proposals more than once in previous sessions. He did not kill this one. He said he was voting yes because the program would fit within the $10 million appropriation already in place for next year.

This is a sad milestone. It is the first time that general education students, the siblings, have been approved for ESA’s in Indiana.

MSD of Steuben County may cut elementary school with highest test scores, cites lack of expected growth

From WANE.com
Residents in small Pleasant Lake, Indiana are up in arms to save one of the town’s oldest residents: Pleasant Lake Elementary.

In the middle of a Feb. 20 board meeting for the Metropolitan School District (MSD) of Steuben County, the district shared some disconcerting enrollment stats.

“Given what you do have out there (in Pleasant Lake), household size and people moving in, you’re going to be bouncing between 80 and 100 (students),” said Jerome McKibbon with the McKibbon Group, a demographic research firm. “Just not enough population housing is out there to warrant it.”

The inability to grow.

A death sentence for a school building that dates back to 1915, although McKibbon said that’s all the more reason for the district to move on.

FORT WAYNE AREA NEWS

SACS outgoing superintendent to lead Grow Allen

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
Park Ginder’s involvement in local education will continue after he retires as the Southwest Allen County Schools superintendent in June.

The longtime public educator will be the inaugural executive director of Grow Allen, the organization announced Thursday.

The Fort Wayne-based group, which celebrated its launch last fall, is leading an initiative to improve student career development and boost northeast Indiana’s economic vitality.
**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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