In Case You Missed It – July 22, 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

"There are several major threads when it comes to K-12 education.

Vouchers, vouchers, vouchers. Eliminate the federal Department of Education, and turn the money for Title I and IDEA into block grants that states can use for anything education-adjacent (but Heritage is hoping it will be for vouchers), with Title I ending within a decade." -- Peter Greene in What Does Project 2025 Actually Plan For Education?

PROJECT 2025

Project 2025's education plan is a broad scheme for privatization.

What Does Project 2025 Actually Plan For Education?

From Peter Greene at Forbes

The education chapter was written by Lindsey Burke, chief of the Heritage Center’s Center for Education Policy. She’s also works at EdChoice, a school choice advocacy group formerly named after Milton Friedman, and she was part of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transition team in 2021.

Burke leads off with some broad goals, including the elimination of the Department of Education and the goal that “families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments.” She salutes Friedman’s ideal, with education publicly funded but “education decisions are made by families.” She points to state leadership where the “future of education freedom and reform is bright and will shine brighter when regulations and red tape from Washington are eliminated.”

Federal money comes with federal rules and regulations attached. Burke proposes that federal dollars come to the states as block grants with no rules or regulations attached. She nods to the characterization of the department that runs through the whole document—a department born of a deal between Jimmy Carter and the National Education Association, attractive because it gave certain people a way to extend their influence via federal power and “continuously expand federal expenditures.” The federal education infrastructure has been “[b]olstered by an ever-growing cabal of special interests that thrive off federal largesse.”

Project 2025’s Plan for Public Education

From NPE Action

Project 2025 has an agenda for public schools: Destroy your neighborhood public schools and make parents shop for schooling using vouchers. Even as that is occurring, it would whittle away protections and support for LGBTQ students, disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities. Watch our explainer and find out how.

Project 2025: What Happens to K-12 in a New Trump Term?

From Diane Ravitch

Matthew Stone of Education Week described the plans for K-12 education in a second Trump term, as they appear in Project 2025, a document written by hundreds of former Trump officials. The 44-page education section emphasizes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, distributing its functions to other agencies, converting categorical funds (like Title I for low-income children) into block grants, and rooting out “critical race theory” and any recognition of the existence of LGBT students. The document emphasizes the primacy of parental rights.

Trump has distanced himself from the document, because its recommendations are so radical, but it was prepared under the watchful eye of Kevin Roberts, president of the ultra-rightwing Heritage Foundation. Roberts is a close associate of Trump’s.

CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE WOKE

Wacky Heritage Foundation Report Warns that Charter Schools Are “Woke”

If being "woke" means being aware of what's going on in your community relating to race and injustice...being awakened to the needs of others...being informed, thoughtful, compassionate, humble, and kind...then count us in.

From Diane Ravitch

A recent Heritage report warns that parents can’t trust charter schools because so many of them are just as “woke” as public schools. Some are even more woke than public schools.

The report, written by Jay Greene, Ian Kingsbury, and Jason Bedrick, asserts that the major philanthropic foundations supporting charter schools—the Walton Family Foundation and the Gates Foundation—are also woke. This is where it gets crazy. Walton is woke? The anti-union, rightwing Waltons?

ILEARN

Indiana’s new ILEARN test scores show student progress remained stagnant in 2024

When reading this article, keep in mind that grades are a better measure of academic success than standardized tests.

Because...

...standardized tests have a major blind spot, the researchers asserted: The exams fail to capture the “soft skills” that reflect a student’s ability to develop good study habits, take academic risks, and persist through challenges, for example. High school grades, on the other hand, appear to do a better job mapping the area where resilience and knowledge meet. Arguably, that’s the place where potential is translated into real achievement.

"...cut-off scores are professional judgments that sit somewhere between objective and subjective, art and science, and reasoned and arbitrary."

From the Indiana Capital Chronicle

New state standardized test results show stagnant progress among Hoosier students in grades 3-8, signaling a continued struggle to reverse widespread learning loss following the COVID-19 pandemic.

New ILEARN scores show 41% of Indiana students who were tested earlier this spring were at or above proficiency standards in English and language arts (ELA), according to new data released Wednesday by the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE). That’s on par with the year prior, when 40.7% of students were proficient.

The percentage of students at or above proficiency standards in math, on the other hand, saw a slight decrease — from 40.9% in 2023 to 40.7% in the most recent school year.

Data released by IDOE reported 30.8% of Hoosier students passed both the math and English sections of ILEARN. That’s slightly up from last year’s spring test results, which showed that 30.6% earned dual passing scores.

SCIENCE OF READING

Science of Reading and the Emperor's New Clothes

Michael B. Shaffer is an associate clinical professor of educational leadership at Ball State University. He wrote this for a pro-public education Facebook group and gave us permission to repost it on the NEIFPE blog.

From Michael B. Shaffer on Facebook and in NEIFPE's Blog

I should clarify that I am not against ANYTHING that improves the practices of literacy instruction and helps students gain better reading skills. I am not against anything that supports teachers in gaining additional skills in literacy instruction. I dedicated most of my professional life as a principal to studying literacy, and providing professional development to the teachers in the schools where I was principal on the topic of literacy. I should say that I started my career as an elementary teacher.

The major argument I have against the current push for Science of Reading at this point is that it is the embodiment of the fable, The Emperor's New Clothes. We have been told that it is something shiny and new and that if we follow it, our students will suddenly start to read effectively where they could not prior to following the path established by SOR and as trained by the State of IN through Keys to Literacy, and includes (are you ready for this?) phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Hold on. Every responsible reading approach I have seen in the last twenty years has been built on these five pillars! Oh, yeah, that is what they call them. The Five Pillars of Reading Instruction. That is not new.

JOIN US

An Evening with Jennifer McCormick

NEIFPE is proud to co-sponsor this event featuring Indiana's next governor, Jennifer McCormick. Hope you can attend.

Click HERE to register for the September 25th event:

^†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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Science of Reading and the Emperor's New Clothes

By Michael B. Shaffer

I should clarify that I am not against ANYTHING that improves the practices of literacy instruction and helps students gain better reading skills. I am not against anything that supports teachers in gaining additional skills in literacy instruction. I dedicated most of my professional life as a principal to studying literacy, and providing professional development to the teachers in the schools where I was principal on the topic of literacy. I should say that I started my career as an elementary teacher.

The major argument I have against the current push for Science of Reading at this point is that it is the embodiment of the fable, The Emperor's New Clothes. We have been told that it is something shiny and new and that if we follow it, our students will suddenly start to read effectively where they could not prior to following the path established by SOR and as trained by the State of IN through Keys to Literacy, and includes (are you ready for this?) phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Hold on. Every responsible reading approach I have seen in the last twenty years has been built on these five pillars! Oh, yeah, that is what they call them. The Five Pillars of Reading Instruction. That is not new.

So, what is new? Oh, they added in a focus on Orton-Gilingham which was the basis for Reading Recovery and a host of other programs. Orton-Gillingham has been around since the 1930s. Again, not new.

I know, they have created a new approach to dealing with dyslexia as we teach literacy. That has to be what is new! Some of you are not old to remember that we were told not to use the term DYSLEXIA. So, allow me to give you a very brief history. Dyslexia was first added to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association) in 1980. It had five distinguishing characteristics then. It stayed there until DSM 5, which removed dyslexia because the APA said there were more precise terms to describe reading difficulties than the broad term dyslexia. However, now, we have brought dyslexia back. PATOSS (the Professional Association of Teachers of Students with Specific learning difficulties) announced a new definition of dyslexia on 15th May 2024. The new definition that PATOSS gave of dyslexia is: Dyslexia is primarily a set of processing difficulties that affect the acquisition of reading and spelling. Thank you, PATOSS, but that is even less specific than we had before.

Now, let's approach the title, The Science of Reading. I personally love to hate that title. Why? Because I am a teacher at the university level, and I teach teachers. What I do, what YOU do, is as much art as it is science. That is every bit as true about the teaching of reading as it is anything else. Now, don't get me wrong, I am a huge believer in intense reading programs for students in kindergarten through second grade. I believe in programs that focus heavily on the five pillars and identify the needs of students who need additional assistance because they cannot learn through traditional means and require RtI or assessment for learning disabilities. I believe in a strong identification process at the building level that actively progress monitors every student to insure that they are making progress and learning. As far as I have seen, the lower grades are largely the setting where much of the science part applies because I have worked with many incredible lower elementary teachers who have mad skills in teaching children to read.

The art side of reading instruction is what I believe applies once a student has gained the skills and mastery of the actual act of reading. It is here that we cross a line in the sand that outsiders to our great profession don't even know exists. This is where the teachers take students from "stop and go" reading to I LOVE READING! What does that mean? To a teacher, it means that a kid will have a book under their desk that they pull out any time they have a free second. It means a boy will scour the library for any book they can find on motorcycles because they are fascinated and want to read every word written about them. It means that a principal or teacher starts book wars against another class and they all read the same book, and the biggest thing going in the school is who can answer the most questions correctly about a book they have all read. It means that a principal has started a book club for boys that has 100 fourth and fifth-grade boys who skip recess every other Friday to hang out and talk about books, and then every day on the way to the bus one of those boys stops to talk to the principal about a. book he is reading.

So, am I impressed with The Science of Reading as defined by what is happening now? If and only if it generates the kind of practices that get teachers more motivated to raise expectations for every child to read in their room, whether that is kindergarten, fourth grade, sixth grade, eighth grade or tenth grade. I am for anything that gets Indiana reading. I am just afraid that the approach mandated by the legislature, ordained by ALEC, and implemented by the DOE is not going to get us there.

Indiana Educators United, we deserve better, and it is about time we demanded it. This THING was rolled out by the legislature without input by professional teachers because ALEC despises teachers' unions (it is part of the warp and woof of their very being) and that is why they did not ask for any of us to participate. And now you know the rest of the story.

Reprinted with permission. Find the original on the Indiana Educators United Facebook page.

In Case You Missed It – July 15, 2024

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

SENATE COMMITTEE TAKES ON VOUCHERS

Senator Sanders Releases Report Assailing Billionaire-Funded Voucher Movement

The Senate HELP Committee has released a report on vouchers.

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

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

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

CHOOSING THE "RIGHT" TEN COMMANDMENTS

When Religion Becomes Farce

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

From Sheila Kennedy

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

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

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

DELETING CLIMATE CHANGE IN TEXTBOOKS

Florida: Textbook Authors Told to Delete References to Climate Change

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

From Diane Ravitch

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

She writes:

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

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

THE DANGER OF PROJECT 2025

Project 2025: Ending Public Education for Students with Disabilities

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

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

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

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

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

LOCAL NEWS

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

Changes for EACS...

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

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

New Southwest Allen County Schools leader ready to listen

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – July 8, 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 assault on public education has displayed the fundamental disconnect between the civic purposes of education and citizens who see education as just another private, consumer good–skills to be acquired (by those who can afford it) in order to enhance the ability of one’s children to succeed in the marketplace." -- Sheila Kennedy in The MAGA Vendetta Against Arts And Education.

PROJECT 2025

The MAGA Vendetta Against Arts And Education

Former Republican Sheila Kennedy writes about politics in Indiana. In this article, she explains an imminent threat to public education.

From Sheila Kennedy

I forget who first popularized the phrase “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” but if Trump should win in November, Project 2025 has outlined policies that would dramatically escalate the attack on public education.

Here are some of the elements of what I can only describe as an assault on steroids:

• Title I, the $18 billion federal fund that supports low-income students, would disappear in a decade.
• Federal special education funds would flow to school districts as block grants with no strings attached, or even to savings accounts for parents to use on private school or other education expenses.
• The U.S. Department of Education would be eliminated.
• The federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws in schools would be scaled back.

The proposals are contained in a comprehensive policy agenda that’s part of a Heritage Foundation-led initiative called Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project, which includes nearly 900 pages of detailed plans for virtually every corner of the federal government and a database of potential staffers for a conservative administration. It will also feature a playbook for the first 180 days of a new term.

Project 2025 was devised by several former Trump administration officials and allies, working with dozens of aligned advocacy organizations (misnamed “think tanks.”) including Moms for Liberty. You will recall that Moms for Liberty is the organization that fought school boards over COVID-19 safety protocols, advocates for censorship of books in school libraries, and endorses far-right school board candidates.

THE EDUCATION WARS

The Education Wars Provides A Guide For Supporters Of Public Education

The podcasters at Have You Heard provide a playbook to defend public education.

"If we are to preserve our schools, it must be clear that public education is for all of us. We must win the peace.

"If we fail at that, we will lose our schools. And if we lose them, they won’t come back."

From Peter Greene at Forbes

In their 2020 book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire sounded the alarm:

The threat to public education...is grave. A radical vision for unmaking the very idea of public schools has moved from the realm of ideological pipe dream to legitimate policy.

In their new book The Education Wars (out this week), Schneider and Berkshire update us on how that radical vision, now fueled by the culture wars, is faring.

The culture wars—roaring debates over what schools are for, what they should teach, who should decide— are not new. But the writers note that “this time it’s different.” This time, the questions under debate include the question of whether public schools should exist at all.

CHOICE

Debunking the School Choice Movement’s Top Evangelist

Corey DeAngelis is on a mission to demonize public schools—and promote voucher programs that benefit his wealthy backers.

From Peter Greene at The Progressive

Corey DeAngelis is an influential, if not the most influential, voice in the rightwing campaign to demonize public schools and privatize public education. The guy’s résumé hits all the bases in the libertarian gameplan. After earning a doctorate at the University of Arkansas’s education reform program (funded by the pro-school choice Walton family), DeAngelis helped found the Education Freedom Institute, became a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation, worked as an adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute, took up an appointment as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and was hired on as a senior fellow at Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children.

He still holds all of those jobs, but his more common title is “school choice evangelist.” As the recent school voucher wave has surged in state after state, DeAngelis has been there to spread the word. While on tour in support of his new book, he distills the current pro-voucher argument.

In a recent talk at the Heritage Foundation, DeAngelis touched on most of the main arguments for vouchers (many of them false) and revealed a few truths about the pro-voucher strategy.

1. The Evil Unions and COVID...

LOCAL NEWS

Imagine if every child has a library of their own

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is a free children's book gifting program that she started in 1995. The program began by offering every child in Sevier County, Tennessee, the area where Dolly was born and raised, a free age-appropriate book each month in the mail until the age of five, regardless of family income. In 2000, the Imagination Library became so popular that Dolly announced that she wanted to make the program available to any community that would partner with her and support it locally. The program has expanded and is currently located in 1,800 local communities in the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

Now, the Imagination Library is coming to Fort Wayne.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a pathway to bridging the reading gap between low-income families and their wealthier counterparts. But most of all, the library is fun for children and families.

Inspired by Parton’s favorite children’s book, “The Little Engine That Could,” Allen County Public Library staff has launched a spirited $100,000 fundraising campaign with the Allen County Public Library Foundation to bring Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to local children. The program gives children one free book each month from birth to age 5.

The enthusiasm is palpable, with nearly 900 Allen County families eager to enroll their children — a testament to the community’s belief in the power of early literacy.

**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 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 – June 24, 2024

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

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

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

THIS WEEK IN ATTACKS ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

Moms on a Mission

How the Right Exploits ‘Moms’ to Privatize Education

From The Progressive

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taxpayers funding private schools

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

From Mother Jones

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

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

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

It's not a choice

Stop Calling It School Choice

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

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

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

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

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

Crossing the line

Louisiana Requires “10 Commandments” in Every Public School Classroom

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

LOCAL AND INDIANA NEWS

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

From WANE.com

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

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

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

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

SACS Board of Trustees officially approves district’s superintendent pick

From WANE.com

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

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

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

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

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

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

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

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – June 17, 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 expansion in voucher programs is part of a broader move in some states toward more government-sponsored religion inside public schools. New laws allow schools to hire chaplains for counseling…. In West Virginia, a new law allows teachers to discuss alternative theories to evolution. Seven states have passed measures mandating elective courses focused on the Bible… In Oklahoma, the state Supreme Court in April considered what would be an unprecedented step toward the mingling of church and state in education, weighing whether the state could directly fund what would be the nation’s first religious charter school." -- Washington Post writers, Laura Meckler and Michelle Boorstein quoted in Erasing the Line that Separates Church and State in Education

SEPARATING CHURCH AND STATE IN EDUCATION

Erasing the Line that Separates Church and State in Education

The Indiana voucher plan is essentially a money laundering scheme for religious schools. The state supreme court claimed that since the tax money used for vouchers really belongs to the parents of children, there is no conflict between church and state. However, the parents don't see the money from the voucher. The so-called "money from the parent" goes directly from the state treasury to the private school.

From Jan Resseger

It has become acceptable for states to award tax funded tuition vouchers to private schools that teach religious doctrine. In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has ignored the First Amendment Establishment Clause and declared that if states permit private schools in general to accept state funded tuition vouchers, the state’s exclusion of religious private schools would violate the free exercise of religion.

The shifting legal prioritization of the Free Exercise Clause over the Establishment Clause has not happened by accident. Activists have worked with far-right legal firms to bring a succession of legal challenges, with each lawsuit designed to shift the Supreme Court’s interpretation a little farther away from protecting the separation of religion and government. In an earlier report this spring, Meckler laid out some of this history: “In recent years, religious activists have succeeded in tearing down what had been a clear delineation between public funding and religious education. In three (of the most recent) significant rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court found that religious institutions may not be excluded from taxpayer-funded programs that were available to others. In a 2017 case, the high court ruled that a church-run preschool in Missouri was entitled to a state grant that funded playgrounds. In 2020, the court ruled that Montana… include religious schools in a program giving tax incentives for supporting private-school tuition scholarships. And last year, the court said that a Maine voucher program that sent rural students to private high schools had to be open to religious schools.”

Peter Greene: Putting Chaplains in Schools is a Very Bad Idea

The current majority on the Supreme Court seems to deny that the First Amendment contains an "Establishment Clause."

From Diane Ravitch

Peter Greene describes the new movement to place chaplains in schools to act as mental health counselors. The politicians behind this demand want Protestant evangelical chaplains, no doubt, but the schools will have requests for all sorts of religions. Not only from the myriad Protestant sects, but from Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Mormons, Unitarians, Buddhists, Hindus, and many others. There would certainly be a need for three Jewish chaplains: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. And every other religion will have divisions that must be addressed. Will there also be mental health counselors for kids who don’t want a chaplain?

CHARTER DISTRICT FAILS

All Charter District Opens Public School

Just because you went to school doesn't mean you know how to teach. Just because your community had a school doesn't mean that you know how to run a school. There is a reason that educators are trained in schools of education.

From Tom Ultican at Tultican

Desires of New Orleans residents were ignored. Neoliberal billionaires were in charge. In all the excitement, few noticed that these oligarchs had no understanding of how public education functions. They threw away 200 years of public school development and replaced it with an experiment. The mostly black residents in the city were stripped of their rights.

Thousands of experienced black educators were fired and replaced by mostly white Teach For America teachers with 5 weeks of training. Instead of stable public schools, people were forced into unstable charter schools. Instead of professional administration, market forces drove the bus!

Clearly, the all charter school system is a failure.

TAX MONEY, MY MONEY

Whose Money Follows The Child?

"...everyone in the country benefits from sharing space with educated co-workers, neighbors, and pretty much everyone else we have to deal with. Everyone shares the cost..." Everyone reaps the benefit.

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

The suggestion that vouchers are simply a means of giving parents back their own money to spend on education as they see fit--that's absurd. Our entire public education system is funded on the theory that everyone in the country benefits from sharing space with educated co-workers, neighbors, and pretty much everyone else we have to deal with. Everyone shares the cost.

It's odd that so much of the voucher crowd is also the "taxation is theft" crowd, because voucher funding requires the voucher holders to take tax dollars from their neighbors while stripping those neighbors of any say in the kind of education those dollars will be spent on. That includes spending my neighbor's tax dollars on a school that would forbit, bar, eject, and demonize those neighbors and their children.

Your money should follow my child.

"Just give us back our tax money, and I'll get my kids the education I want and everyone else can get the kind of education they want," is top-grade bullshit. The only people who it even sort of works for is the folks living in very expensive houses. For everyone else, the end result is some kind of lower tier cheap crappy school--or getting your neighbors to chip in.

Your money should follow my child.

Or maybe we could pool all our money and set up a system to take care of all the children.

LOCAL NEWS

Fort Wayne Community Schools board begins interviews to fill vacancy

Rohli Booker gave up her seat on the FWCS school board to claim a City Council seat. The FWCS board is interviewing for her replacement.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Fort Wayne Community Schools board Tuesday began interviews with four candidates seeking to serve the remainder of former member Rohli Booker’s term.

Antonette Payne was the only applicant for the open District 4 seat to be publicly interviewed Tuesday night...

SACS board responds to questions about proposed superintendent contract

From 21 Alive

Southwest Allen County Schools is one of the largest districts in our area and the SACS Superintendent is a high-profile job.

Tuesday night, leaders moved one step closer to filling that critical position.

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – June 10, 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 addition of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is one more step we can take to have a real impact on the lives of our youngest (community members),” [said Allen County Commissioner Rich Beck]. “We are ready to engage our community in securing funds not only to launch the program but to sustain it in the long run.”

Donations can be made at acpl.info/imaginationlibrary or at any branch." -- in Allen County Public Library fundraising for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

LOCAL NEWS

Allen County Public Library fundraising for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

In 1995, Dolly Parton launched the Imagination Library in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she was born and raised. She was inspired by her own father’s inability to read or write and determined that there had to be a way to help children fall in love with books. The program sends free books to children from birth to age five and helped to inspire a love of reading in the lives of the children in the mountains of her youth. Now, with your help, the same program is coming to Fort Wayne...

From Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Allen County Public Library is using Dolly Parton’s favorite children’s book – “The Little Engine That Could” – as the inspiration for its next fundraiser, its executive director said.

“What did the train say? ‘I think I can,’ ” Susan Baier said during a Thursday news conference. “I think we can as well. I think Allen County can make this a reality, and we are asking all of you to get the momentum going.”

The library’s staff announced a new $100,000 fundraising campaign with the Allen County Public Library Foundation to bring Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to local children. The program gives one free book each month to children from birth to age 5.

The library needs to raise money to fund the program’s launch and sustain the first two years.

Click to donate to the Imagination Library at ACPL.

FWCS expands Peacemaker program after success at South Side

From The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Next week, more than 60 Fort Wayne high school students will begin training with a local nonprofit on how to cultivate a culture of peace at their school during the 2024-25 school year.

Alive Community Outreach’s Peacemaker Academy started as a nonviolent leadership development program at South Side High School. Since 2021, school officials say the Alive initiative has contributed to a reduction in fights, late arrivals and disruptive conduct.

In February, the Fort Wayne Community Schools board awarded Alive a $500,000 contract to expand the Peacemaker program to North Side, Northrop, Snider and Wayne high schools with money from the school district’s recent Safer FWCS referendum.

Subsequent contracts will come to the school board yearly, Matt Schiebel, FWCS’ executive director of safety and community partnerships, told The Journal Gazette’s Ashley Sloboda. He said the district will evaluate the program’s progress annually and make adjustments as needed.

A STUDENT SUCCESS STORY

Man with Sixteen College Degrees Can’t Read

Check out this fascinating article…

From Nancy Flanagan who blogs at Teacher in a Strange Land

I mostly stay out of the Reading Wars. Not because I don’t have opinions on reading instruction. I emphatically do. I avoid the controversy because—as a lifelong music teacher—expressing that opinion inevitably leads to a pack of Science of Reading enthusiasts pointing out that I am not a reading teacher, and therefore what do I know?

This is deeply ironic, as those same SOR fans also spend lots of time criticizing experienced reading specialists. Also–I have taught in the neighborhood of 4000-5000 kids, over 30+ years, to read music, relying on a wide array of pedagogical techniques. But that form of reading instruction evidently carries no water with the SOR bullies.

I was intrigued today by a story in NY Times Magazine about Benjamin Bolger

NEW ORLEANS CHARTER DISTRICT

After a 7-year experiment, New Orleans is an all-charter district no more

This excellent article summarizes how the marketplace system fails children.

After a 7-year experiment, New Orleans is an all-charter district no more.

From Route Fifty

In August, New Orleans Public Schools will open a district-operated school named for Leah Chase, a late civil rights activist and revered matriarch of a culinary dynasty. The school will eventually serve 320 students from pre-K through eighth grade, with an emphasis on the city’s culture and history. Located in a historic building, it will replace the failing Lafayette Academy Charter School

As they hire Leah Chase’s teachers, pick its uniforms and curricula and arrange for transportation and lunches, district leaders are also creating the administrative jobs other school systems rely on to oversee individual buildings. These central office departments will make it easier for NOLA Public Schools to open more “direct-run” schools, Superintendent Avis Williams says.

You read that right: New Orleans’ love-it-or-hate-it, seven-year experiment as the nation’s first all-charter school system is coming to a close. Going forward, it will act both as a charter school authorizer and an old-fashioned school district.

INDIANA DIPLOMA CHANGES

‘You are hurting the future of the state’: Educators share views on Indiana’s proposed high school diploma changes

Listen to educators!

From 21 Alive

“You are hurting the future of this state in more ways than one with these proposed changes,” a teacher said. “You pay little to no regard to those in the trenches who have to figure out the logistics and add more to their overflowing plates to carry out your ideas.”

Back in March, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) announced a proposal to change the number of high school diploma options from four down to two. They say the consolidation is part of an ongoing effort to rethink the high school experience making it more career-relevant and learner-centric.

In the proposal, Indiana’s future diplomas would include the Indiana GPS (Graduates Prepared to Succeed) Diploma, a more flexible version of the current Core 40 diploma, and the Indiana GPS Diploma Plus, a work-based learning approach. IDOE says the new diplomas will align with the state’s current graduation pathways and the five characteristics of the Indiana GPS model.

**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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