In Case You Missed It – May 13, 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

"Democratic House Minority Leader Shelli Yoder called prohibiting other methods of teaching 'heavy-handed' and 'tyrannical,' even if well-intentioned.

"'If we’ve done one thing it is to communicate to teachers that we do not trust your profession, and we’re gonna micromanage it,' Yoder said. 'And we’re going to make sure that you use this one method of teaching reading. That does create a bit of a pause for me.'" -- Indiana Joins States Mandating the Science of Reading in Classrooms

THE SCIENCE OF READING MANDATES

Indiana has jumped on the Science of Reading (SoR) bandwagon which includes banning other methods of teaching reading. The state's NAEP scores in reading have dropped, though they are still around the national average. This has given the legislature the excuse to micromanage education, while -- no surprise -- blaming teachers, for the "reading crisis." Other states with legislatures not favorable to public education are joining in -- like Iowa.

The Science of Reading debate is a rehashing of the ongoing "Reading Wars" which pits so-called "phonics first" techniques against so-called "whole language" methods. The debate is not settled.

How many reading education experts are members of the Indiana legislature?

For more information on this topic, see...

The Science of Reading Movement: The never-ending debate and the need for a different approach to reading instruction

ILEC Response: Reading Science: Staying the course amidst the noise (Albert Shanker Institute)

Iowa Mandates “Science of Reading”

The following two articles from Diane Ravitch provide some information about the debate.

From Diane Ravitch

The “Science of Reading” is the panacea of the moment. Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill requiring the use of SofR in the state’s classrooms.

ADEL, Iowa (Gray Television Iowa Capitol Bureau) – Governor Kim Reynolds signed a new law Tuesday meant to boost literacy rates for Iowa children. It requires schools teach a specific reading method, called the Science of Reading, and develop individual plans for students not at grade level.

Nick Covington: What the “Science of Reading” Overlooks

From Diane Ravitch

Nick Covington taught social studies for a decade. He recently decided to delve into the mystique of “the science of reading.” He concluded that we have been “sold a story.”

He begins:

Literacy doesn’t come in a box, we’ll never find our kids at the bottom of a curriculum package, and there can be no broad support for systemic change that excludes input from and support for teachers implementing these programs in classrooms with students.

Exactly one year after the final episode of the podcast series that launched a thousand hot takes and opened the latest front of the post-pandemic Reading Wars, I finally dug into Emily Hanford’s Sold A Story from American Public Media. Six episodes later, I’m left with the ironic feeling that the podcast, and the narrative it tells, missed the point. My goal with this piece is to capture the questions and criticisms that I have not just about the narrative of Sold A Story but of the broader movement toward “The Science of Reading,” and bring in other evidence and perspectives that inform my own. I hope to make the case that “The Science of Reading” is not a useful label to describe the multiple goals of literacy; that investment in teacher professionalization is inoculation against being Sold A Story; and that the unproductive and divisive Reading Wars actually make it more difficult for us to think about how to cultivate literate kids. The podcast, and the Reading Wars it launched, disseminate an incomplete and oversimplified picture of a complex process that plasters over the gaps with feverish insistence.

MORE NON-EXPERTS IN EDUCATION

Elon Musk Has Some Education Thoughts

Yet another billionaire who thinks that his money makes him an education expert.

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

Elon Musk has some thoughts about education, and because he's Very Rich, Fortune Magazine decided it should share some of those thoughts, despite Musk's utter lack of qualifications to talk about education.

Reporter Christiaan Hetzner mostly covers business in Europe, so it's not clear how he stumbled into this particular brief piece, which appears to be lifting a piece of a larger conversation into an article. I'd love a new rule that says every time an outlet gives space to a rich guy's musings about areas in which he has no expertise, the outlet also publishes a piece about the musings of some ordinary human on the topic--maybe even an ordinary human who is an expert in the area.

Hetzner launches right in with both feet.

More than a century ago, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Well, Elon Musk is a doer with a lot of children, and he’s reached the conclusion he doesn’t want his kids to learn from some has-been or never-was simply because they landed a job in a local school thanks to a lack of competition.

It's not clear if Hetzner is editorializing or trying to channel Musk's point of view (I think perhaps the latter), but somebody here is really full of it. I'm not going to argue about Musk's doer qualifications, though his ability to profit off the work of others and his interminable botching of twitter leave me unpersuaded of his genius. But this characterization of teachers is some serious bullshit. And things aren't going to get better.

SEGREGATION IS CREEPING BACK UP AGAIN

5 takeaways about segregation 70 years after the Brown decision

America's classrooms are still struggling with segregation.

From The Hechinger Report

...1. The long view shows progress but a worrying uptick, especially in big cities

Not much changed for almost 15 years after the Brown decision. Although Black students had the right to attend another school, the onus was on their families to demand a seat and figure out how to get their child to the school. Many schools remained entirely Black or entirely white...

2. School choice plays a role in recent segregation

Why is segregation creeping back up again?

The expiration of court orders that mandated school integration and the expansion of school choice policies, including the rapid growth of charter schools, explains all of the increase in segregation from 2000 onward, said Reardon. Over 200 medium-sized and large districts were released from desegregation court orders from 1991 to 2009, and racial school segregation in these districts gradually increased in the years afterward.

School choice, however, appears to be the dominant force. More than half of the increase in segregation in the 2000s can be attributed to the rise of charter schools, whose numbers began to increase rapidly in the late 1990s. In many cases, either white or Black families flocked to different charter schools, leaving behind a less diverse student body in traditional public schools...

NO PUBLIC SCHOOL FOR UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS -- HERITAGE FOUNDATION

Heritage Foundation Wants to Deny the Right to Public Schooling for Undocumented Immigrant Children

The Heritage Foundation argues for denying undocumented immigrant children a chance at public education.

From Jan Resseger

I like to think I know enough about awful public policy that it would be hard to surprise me, but I confess that the beginning of Kalyn Belsha’s new report for Chalkbeat describes a politics so indecent that I was shocked:

“An influential conservative think tank has laid out a strategy to challenge a landmark Supreme Court decision that protects the right of undocumented children to attend public school. The Heritage Foundation, which is spending tens of millions of dollars to craft a policy playbook for a second Trump presidential term… released a brief calling on states to require public schools to charge unaccompanied migrant children and children with undocumented parents tuition to enroll.” (You can look at the Heritage Foundation’s very short policy brief which is part of Heritage’s Project 2025 that lays out an extremely conservative platform.)

Belsha explains Heritage’s reasoning for this cruelty: “Such a move ‘would draw a lawsuit from the Left,’ the brief states, ‘which would likely lead the Supreme Court to reconsider its ill-considered Plyler v. Doe decision’—referring to the 1982 ruling that held it was unconstitutional to deny children a public education based on their immigration status.”

We like to think we are kinder and more civilized in America than we used to be in the days of slavery, Jim Crow, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, but I guess the Heritage Foundation feels comfortable taking us back to 1975, when Texas passed a law to deny undocumented children the right, enjoyed by all children in the United States, to a free public education.

LOCAL NEWS

East Allen County Schools teacher earns national honor

Excellent teaching here in our own neighborhood.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

When math teacher Dawn Baxter stepped inside a Paul Harding Junior High School room on Thursday morning, her confusion was evident when colleagues and students cheered her arrival while Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” played.

Principal Charles Washington quickly ended the suspense. With an arm around Baxter’s shoulders, the administrator said she was named a Math 180 Educator of the Year by learning technology company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

“Seriously?” Baxter replied.

The recognition honors teachers who demonstrate exceptional commitment to their students’ growth inside and outside of the classroom using the company’s Math 180 intervention program.

**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 – May 6, 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

"Former Education Secretary Betsy Devos has teamed up with billionaire trader and TikTok investor Jeff Yass to dismantle public education by spending tens of millions on state elections to pass charter and private school voucher bills." -- From Little Sis Public Accountability Initiative in Billionaires Yass, DeVos Team Up to Dismantle Public Schools Across the US.

DEVOS STILL TRYING TO DISMANTLE PUBLIC EDUCATION

Billionaires Yass, DeVos Team Up to Dismantle Public Schools Across the US

Betsy DeVos hasn't given up her dream of destroying public education in America. She's teamed up with TikTok investor Jeff Yass who is eager to help.

From Little Sis: Public Accountability Initiative

On a hot July day in Tampa at the 2022 Moms for Liberty Summit, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told the crowd that the US Department of Education should be abolished. This claim – that the very department she recently led should not exist – earned her a standing ovation from the Moms for Liberty members in the room.

The moment highlights how extreme the right wing in the United States has veered on education policy. Newer groups like Moms for Liberty that demonize LGBTQ+ students, critical race theory, and COVID-19 protections as “wokeness gone too far” are not only breathing new life into Betsy DeVos’s long-standing efforts to privatize public education, but are also making education a top issue for the U.S. right wing. Billionaires like DeVos and grassroots groups like Moms for Liberty have come together to form what they call the “education freedom” movement.

But while the DeVos family has been a long time funder of the cause, in recent years the legislative efforts to demonize and defund public schools have been strengthened by another billionaire: Jeff Yass, the co-founder and Managing Director of Susquehanna International Group.

VOUCHERS DRAIN MONEY FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Ohio’s *School Vouchers for All*: Expanded, Expensive, but Not Audited

Vouchers don't help students. They divert public money from public schools to private, mostly religious, schools.

From deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

EdChoice, Ohio’s school voucher program, is the subject of a lawsuit dating back to January 2022. Among other issues, the suit notes, “Due in large part to the hundreds of millions of dollars diverted to funding private school tuition through the EdChoice Program, the General Assembly has failed in its constitutional obligation to fully fund Ohio’s public school districts at the level which the General Assembly has, itself, determined to be required.”

Vouchers for All! Money for Public Schools? Well, um…
Since the time the suit was filed, the Ohio legislature has expanded the program such that families with annual incomes of 450% above the poverty line, or $135,000 for a family of four, are eligible for school voucher funds, but it doesn’t stop there: Even families exceeding the $135k/yr cap can receive a small percentage of school voucher funding– a move that arguably contributes to the shifting of school voucher money away from lower-income families and children of color to more affluent families and more white students. From the January 30, 2024, Ohio Capital Journal:

The lawsuit has been active for two years, after Vouchers Hurt Ohio, the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, and five school districts around Ohio joined together to argue that the private school voucher program has become an disproportionately overgrown and flies in the face of the public school education established in Ohio’s constitution.

CHAPLAIN BILLS POP UP AROUND THE COUNTRY

‘Chaplains’ for Christian Nationalism

Schools need counselors, not proselytizers. 

From A Public Witness

Lawmakers in 13 other states filed similar bills this year. Bills passed one chamber in both Indiana and Utah before dying for this year, while a bill in Oklahoma passed in the state House yesterday (April 24). Another such bill has passed the Senate in Louisiana and just had a committee hearing in the House yesterday.

This new legislative movement for “chaplains” in public schools started last year in Texas. After lawmakers passed a bill that required every school district to vote on whether or not to replace certified counselors with unlicensed “chaplains,” advocates like the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Interfaith Alliance, and Texas Impact mobilized chaplains and other religious leaders to campaign against local approvals. All 25 of the largest school districts voted against the “chaplaincy” program.

Despite the local organizing success to minimize the impact of the Texas bill, the proposal still inspired copycat bills this year (with even more states likely to consider it next year). As lawmakers debate such legislation, the concern about Satanists being allowed as chaplains popped up in multiple states, thus leading the activist and the governor to try and declare by fiat that such individuals wouldn’t qualify.

JENNIFER MCCORMICK FOR GOVERNOR

Indiana: Jennifer McCormick for Governor!!

Former Republican turned Democrat, Jennifer McCormick, is running for Governor of Indiana.

From Diane Ravitch

Indiana has plunged headlong into privatization of its-once-beloved public schools.

Fortunately, there is a knowledgeable candidate for Governor who has promised to stop the destruction of public education.

Jennifer McCormick is a career educator who began as a special education teacher, then became a language arts teacher, a principal and a district superintendent.

She was elected Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2016; she ran as a Republican. She served out her four-year term and switched parties in 2021.

McCormick wrote on Twitter:

Indiana GOP’s school privatization efforts have diverted 1.6B of tax dollars away from public schools, and the majority of communities do not have families and/or private schools participating. As governor, I will champion for Indiana to pause funding school privatization.

LOCAL NEWS

State has chance to reverse its greatest educational error

An explanation about how a good public idea became a bad education policy.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Indiana is in the process of revamping its high school curricula. This could be a superb opportunity to rethink some fundamentals about schooling, its role in society and the needs of the future economy.

It is also a good time to recenter the long-term well-being of students into the discussion.

However, the last time Indiana made significant changes to school curriculum, we failed badly. That cannot happen again.

In December 2013, then-Gov. Mike Pence announced an ambitious plan to offer more career-focused education to Hoosier high school kids who weren’t going to college. It was a smart, thoughtful and much-needed addition to our educational landscape. I was an enthusiastic supporter.

Almost from the beginning, the execution of that plan was botched. It is worth recounting how a very good idea became very bad public policy, and how the accumulated mistakes of a decade continue to haunt Indiana’s economic performance even now and into the distant future.

The Mitch Daniels-era education reforms were successful on almost every important measure. The push for higher standards revealed itself in test scores, graduation rates, and college attendance and success. They strengthened good local public schools and forced bad ones to change.

But not everyone wishes to go to college and, for three generations, we’d cut programs for those students.

Northwest Allen County Schools honors top staffers

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Northwest Allen County Schools began announcing its top teachers and employees of the year Wednesday.

Matt Deckard, an instructional assistant at Carroll High School, was honored as a 2024 Staff Member of the Year. He was recognized for creating a dynamic learning environment for students through engaging storytelling and passion for his subject, a district news release said.

Jeb Campbell, a Carroll computer science teacher, was named a 2024 Teacher of the Year. He was honored for his dedication to guiding and fostering student growth, the release said.

Deckard and Campbell were nominated by NACS community members, such as students, parents and district employees.

The district plans to recognize six total employees by the end of the week.

Northwest Allen County school eyes addition of therapy dog

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

A Northwest Allen County Schools principal is planning for a new co-worker – a therapy dog that will regularly visit the building to increase students’ empathy, self-esteem and sense of belonging, among other goals.

Courtney Bailey, who leads Cedar Canyon Elementary School, has been working to raise money to cover the training costs associated with the dog since the school board approved a new policy in January about animals on district property.

She told the school board last week that she has secured the $20,000 needed for training, and about $8,000 of that was ready for board approval April 22. Grants and business partnerships were among the funding sources for the training, she 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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In Case You Missed It – April 29, 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 number of individual books banned by schools is soaring to a record level, according to a new PEN America report Banned in the USA: Narrating the Crisis. The report documents over 4,000 instances of book banning during the first half of the current school year – more than in the entire previous 2022-2023 school year.

"The report, which examines book bans from July to December 2023, details book bans in 52 public school districts across 23 states. Bans took place in both red and blue districts." -- from Pen America in New Report Finds Unprecedented Surge in School Books Bans

UNTRADITIONAL EDUCATION

The Return of the Tradteacher

Should we support untraditional teaching, curriculum, and school organization models?

From Teacher in a Strange Land

Been reading about the tradwife lately? Although explicit definitions vary, the general gist is returning to a post-war conception of a stay-at-home wife, most likely with children (or planning for children), in relationships where men make all the family decisions, and control the finances. Reinforcing patriarchal norms and glorifying the satisfying and ‘natural’ role of housewife.

If you’re hearing a touch of cynicism there, well—I lived through a time when the tradwife, even if she was working, could not get a credit card or substantial business loan. While I certainly defend any woman’s right to stay home and support her children and spouse in places other than an outside workplace, the whole “tradwife” schtick (especially combined with the rollback of Roe) makes me itchy.

It also strikes me that tradwives are just another glitzy, social media-driven facet of a larger wave of backlash against a whole lot of un-trad trends in American society: Full-blown reproductive freedom. The continued shrinkage of mainline religions. Honoring personal sex/gender choices. Women running for office and corner offices–and winning. And so on.

I also see lots of pushback against untraditional teaching, curriculum and school organization models. The whole “Science of Reading” battle rings very familiar to those of us who started teaching in the 1970s, when teachers were pushing back against the “Why Johnny Can’t Read” –because teachers theoretically weren’t teaching phonics–crusade in the late 50s.

SUPPORT PUBLIC EDUCATION

Defend the People’s Schools

Tom Ultican offers a source for those who support public education.

From Tultican

I am sure you’ll be shocked to your core but there are some really bad people out there trying to end publicly-financed free education.

Since the beginning to the 21st millennium, misguided wealthy people have been attacking public education. The reasons range from religion to hubris. Betsy DeVos thinks secular education is an insult to her Christian God. Bill Gates believes he knows more than anyone else and Charles Koch is opposed to all government-sponsored social action. That would all be fine if they were not billionaires, using immense wealth to impose their way.

Truth-in-Funding (TiF) offers tools for opposing their propaganda with a webpage providing links to 25 organizations, working to protect public schools. Organizations such as National Education Policy Center, Network for Public Education and Education Law Center share links to their research along with toolkits for delivering the message.

TiF’s homepage states:

“School voucher programs use public funds to pay for private education costs. These programs are spreading despite overwhelming evidence that they are harmful public policy.”

And their about page says:

“This website offers a wide range of tools from groups that oppose vouchers and other efforts to divert public funding in education. We work to protect the vital institution of public education and ensure all students have access to welcoming, well-resourced public schools.”

GOOD TEACHERS

David Berliner: The U.S. Has Many Wonderful Teachers, and Few Who Are “Bad” Teachers

Good teachers are out there.

From Diane Ravitch
[quote edited for typos]

A refereed journal article by colleagues reported on a survey of adults, asking for their beliefs about “good teachers.” The respondents defined good teachers as those who “knew me, cared about me, and wanted me to do well; created interesting activities for us to do; praised me and other students for good grades and improvements; gave extra help or a challenge to students who needed or wanted it; covered a lot of material that was useful; and made learning relevant to me and my life.”

These respondents had little trouble recalling such teachers. Good teachers demonstrated caring and support, along with strong subject matter knowledge. They also estimated that more than two-thirds of their teachers were good or very good teachers, and they believed that only 12% of their teachers were bad or very bad.

With a different set of colleagues, I studied what students said about their “bad teachers”. In that study we had access to 4.8 million ratings of teachers! Using a 100-point scale, 55% of our respondents gave a maximum rating of 100 (the best score), 75% gave a rating of 80 or more, and 89% gave a rating greater than 50 points. These data are compatible with other studies suggesting that America’s students are exposed to high percentages of “good” teachers, and a low percentage of “bad” teachers.

LOCAL NEWS

FWCS board approves new math curriculum adoption

Students in Fort Wayne will learn math with new curriculum materials.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Fort Wayne Community Schools board on Monday approved a new math curriculum for elementary and middle school students.

The board approved buying both i-Ready from Curriculum Associates of North Billerica, Mass., and Indiana Reveal from McGraw Hill of Columbus. The district will spend more than $3.5 million total on the curriculum.

i-Ready will be used for elementary students, and Indiana Reveal will be used at the middle school level. Both resources are Indiana standard-aligned and can be used in core, small group and individualized instruction.

Courtney Lumbley, FWCS director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, said the district started the pilot process in fall 2022. She said 19 elementary and five middle schools have used the material. The pilot involved about 1,500 elementary and about 1,200 middle school students.

“We found so much value in the two-year process for teachers to really understand in depth what those publishers have to offer,” Lumbley 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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