In Case You Missed It – November 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.

IMPORTANT CALENDAR NOTE: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is taking a vacation. We will return on December 9, 2024. In the meantime, follow us on Facebook, Threads (@NEIFPE), and Bluesky (@neifpe.bsky.social).

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

"Most Americans want better public schools not a scattered approach of schools for the wealthy and schools for the poor, or to have their children facing computers all day. Let’s honor our students by providing them free quality democratic public schools that reject no one.

This needs to be a promise to our youngest children, that public schools will continue to be supported by Americans to work collectively with everyone." -- Nancy Bailey in Will the Future Include Free Democratic Public Schools and Teachers?

PRESERVE PUBLIC EDUCATION

Will the Future Include Free Democratic Public Schools and Teachers?

At the end of this post there's a link to a page on the Network for Public Education's website. What can you do to help preserve public education?

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

...according to the 2022 Kappan Gallup Poll, despite all the supposed anger surrounding COVID-19 and school closings, controversial books, CRT, gender identities, etc., Americans like their local public schools!

According to the results:

Americans’ ratings of their community’s public schools reached a new high dating back 48 years in this year’s PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools,

Polls have shown this for years. Parents might believe other public schools aren’t good, due to what they hear, but they’re satisfied with their child’s local public school!

This is good news; it hardly seems like the end of public education or that Americans want school choice! Many Republican and Democratic parents share the hope of creating quality public schools for America!

But all is not well. The Poll also indicates that the public recognizes difficulties facing teachers.

. . .fewer than ever expressed interest in having their child work as a public school teacher.

This is serious since teachers are the backbone of a school...

WHAT DO WE DO IN AMERICA?

How Do German Schools Teach Their Political History?

The German's learned that history is important. They aren't restricting what their schools teach about their role in World War II, in fact, they require that student learn and understand what happened.

From Nancy Flanagan in Teacher in a Strange Land blog

I asked, as a teacher, what German schoolchildren were taught about Germany’s role in World War II. It was part of their national curriculum, he told us. They began with equity and community in early childhood, accepting differences and playing together. When students were 12, they read Anne Frank. Media literacy and logic and an intense focus on preparation for good, attainable, satisfying jobs were part of the program, in addition to history, economics and the predictable disciplines. We do not avoid our history, he said.

So what do you do in America, he asked?

Here's what some states are doing in America...

Department of Education reports near double increase in library book removals

From Florida Phoenix

During the 2023-2024 school year, Florida schools removed nearly twice as many books than the year before following challenges from parents and community members.

Schools removed 732 titles during the 2023-2024 school year, on top of 386 removed the year before.

Twenty-three districts contributed to the list, with Clay, Indian River, and Volusia counties making up significant portions.

The removals stem from state laws requiring school boards to adopt protocols for screening books deemed to be pornographic or contain sexual content.

Florida book removals have been the subject of lawsuits claiming censorship and limiting freedom of expression.

NEW RESEARCH, SAME AS THE OLD RESEARCH

Socioeconomic status explains most of the racial and ethnic achievement gaps in elementary school

We've known for years that poverty is the largest factor that explains America's achievement gaps. This report on recent research comes to the same conclusion and adds some important factors.

From Eric Hengyu Hu and Paul L. Morgan in The Conversation

For decades, white students have performed significantly better than Black and Hispanic students on tests of academic achievement. Explanations for these achievement gaps include poverty and systems that result in discrimination. Others cite struggles to learn English. And some folks believe that some groups simply don’t value education.

Our new report shows that gaps in achievement between white, Black and Hispanic students in elementary school are primarily explained by differences in family socioeconomic status. That is, kindergartners from families with similar economic resources and educational backgrounds – among other factors – later displayed similar levels of achievement. This was true regardless of their race or ethnicity.

POST-ELECTION COMMENTARY

The new Trump administration has some plans for public education in the United States.

Despite Positive Election Results for Public Education in Some States, Trump’s Federal Education Agenda Remains Scary

From Jan Resseger

At the federal level, however, based on President-Elect Donald Trump’s comments during the recent campaign, the planks in this year’s Republican Platform, and the educational goals outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has been presented as a blueprint for the incoming president’s reform of federal education policy, many seasoned education reporters are worried not only about a possible drop in the federal investment in U.S. public schools, but also about reduced protection of students’ civil rights, and about the disruption in schools and communities if Trump pursues his promised massive deportation of immigrants.

Project 2025 proposes block granting Title I dollars to states (without targeting the funds to schools serving impoverished students) and eventually phasing out the program, block granting IDEA dollars to states without required protection of services for disabled students, and eliminating Head Start for impoverished preschoolers. Just before the election, Education Week‘s Alyson Klein reviewed these proposals in the context of the record of the first Trump administration’s diminished support for public schooling: “Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, consolidated offices within the Education Department. And under Trump, staffing levels shrank significantly in the office of elementary and secondary education…. The office lost nearly 14 percent of its staff between the end of the Obama administration and the midpoint of the Trump administration at the start of 2019… In every budget request, Trump proposed deep cuts to the U.S. Department of Education’s bottom line, only to see them rejected by Congress.”

Closing the U.S. Department of Education: A LOSS for Children with Disabilities

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Donald Trump just proclaimed the Project 2025 agenda in 10 points about education. As expected, this includes dismantling the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), responsible for many federal laws protecting students.

This post will focus on the loss of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

Many believe that states and local school districts can assimilate the laws or another department can take them over after a DOE closure, but this is a gamble. Transferring this legal responsibility to states or a department concentrating on other issues could mean the end of hard-fought, long-time laws that have benefited students.

To tamper with IDEA, a law that involved so much positive and critical change in the lives of students with disabilities, although imperfect, but a law just the same, would be terrible for the lives of these children and their families.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Protect Public Education: Here is What You Can Do

Click the link to see what you can do. What will you do?

From the Network for Public Education Action

NPE Needs Volunteers to Join the Fight for Public Schools and America’s Children.

From a mandate for prayer in public schools, threats to fire teachers and principals, and an embrace of vouchers, Donald Trump has revealed his 10-point plan of hostility toward public schools on X.

Our tiny staff and Board cannot wage this fight alone. We need your help. Since the election, friends of public schools have emailed the Network for Public Education asking what they can do.

If you would like to volunteer to help stop the destruction of public schools and protect America’s children and teachers, please go here and let us know. You will find a menu of ways to help. Present and future generations of children depend on us. This is our moment to stand up and fight for democratically governed schools that welcome ALL children.

^†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 – November 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

"...the main tactic of privatizers remains getting friendly legislators to ignore the voting public and just go ahead and create voucher programs. Just look at Texas, where the now years-long fight by Governor Greg Abbott to get vouchers in the state has not hinged on changing the public’s mind or arguing the merits of vouchers, but on using a mountain of money to tilt elections so that he can get enough voucher-friendly legislators in place to give him vouchers." -- Peter Greene in NPE blog post, Even in a Red Wave, Voters Reject School Vouchers

VOTERS REJECT VOUCHERS

Even in a Red Wave, Voters Reject School Vouchers

When vouchers are put to the vote, Americans reject them. This year's election was no different. Voters rejected vouchers in three states.

From Peter Greene in the NPE Blog

...Colorado tried to amend the state constitution to put in place a right to school choice. The amendment was spectacularly awful, creating the potential for endless lawsuits and unmanageable demands by parents. Even the Christian Home Educators recognized that it was a spectacularly bad idea.

...In Kentucky, choice fans were miffed that the state supreme court could actually read and understand the plain language of their constitution, which says

No sum shall be raised or collected for education other than in common schools until the question of taxation is submitted to the legal voters, and the majority of the votes cast at said election shall be in favor of such taxation

So the court rejected various attempts to use public tax dollars for private school vouchers, and voucherphiles decided they’s just have to get the constitution rewritten.

Kentucky went 65% – 34% for Trump, and swept all sorts of MAGA officials back into office. Pretty much those exact numbers went the other way for the amendment, sending it down in flames.

Nebraska had perhaps the longest row to hoe, as the legislature passed a voucher law in 2023. Voters successfully petitioned to put a repeal of that law on the ballot, so the legislators repealed and replaced it themselves in an attempt to do an end run around voters. So a second petition was circulated, and repeal of the new law was placed on the ballot.

That repeal passed, and Nebraska’s voucher law is now toast.

ASSAULT ON EDUCATIONAL SPEECH

The Right’s ‘All-Out Assault on Educational Speech’ Continues Unabated

Book banning and curriculum restrictions have spread to post secondary education.

From The Progressive

A recently released report from PEN America, titled America’s Censored Classrooms 2024, tells a grim story about the right’s ongoing legislative attacks on inclusive public education.

According to the 102-year-old group, the steep rise in the number of book bans during the 2023-2024 academic year—more than 10,000 at last count—and educational gag orders to limit what topics K-12 teachers can teach and what books they can use has now spread to public colleges and universities. In the higher education sector, gag orders intersect with other worrying trends—including the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and constraints on college curricula and shared faculty governance—leading to what PEN calls “an all-out assault on educational speech.”

Jeremy C. Young, director of PEN’s Freedom to Learn program, tells The Progressive that six rightwing think tanks—The Claremont Institute, The Ethics and Public Policy Center, The Goldwater Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Manhattan Institute, and the National Association of Scholars—are largely responsible for the expansion of book bans and gag orders from K-12 to colleges and universities.

INDIANA HOUSE SEAT STAYS WITH PRIVATIZER

GOP spends big to keep rural legislative seat

[Editor's note: Republican incumbent Dave Hall has retained his seat in Indiana’s 62nd House District with 51.1% of the votes, a difference of about 800 votes.]

From School Matters

This year, Democrat Thomas Horrocks is challenging Hall. Horrocks is a church pastor and an Indiana National Guard chaplain. He has raised money and campaigned energetically, including with TV ads. On his campaign website, he lists supporting public education as one of his priorities. “This means universal pre-k, keeping public dollars in public schools, and paying teachers what they’re worth,” he says.

Hall, a farmer and the owner of a crop insurance business, seems to be a congenial and civic-minded person who takes being a legislator seriously. Unlike his fellow Jackson County Republican, Rep. Jim Lucas of Seymour, he doesn’t gratuitously threaten people or pick fights over guns and culture-war issues. His campaign website doesn’t mention education. A cute TV ad says he’ll protect public schools like his daughter’s, but he voted for the 2023 budget bill that expanded vouchers.

If Hall wins, he will owe his seat not only to the voters but to the organizations that paid for his campaign: the House Republican Campaign Committee and its deep-pocketed donors, including groups that promote vouchers and charter schools. Hall has raised over $600,000 this year, and more than half came from the HRCC.

When the time comes for tough votes on expanding “school choice,” a perennial priority for Republican leaders and their pals, you can bet he’ll be reminded of that.

LOCAL NEWS

Good news on teacher salaries -- sort of

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

An Indiana state government report on teacher salaries reveals an average pay exceeding $60,000, which might seem promising at first glance. However, this number conceals troubling realities: Our educators earn well less than the median salary for degreed workers and are paid less than their neighbors and nationally.

Released on Nov. 1, the 2023-24 Teacher Compensation Report by the Indiana Education Employment Relations Board provides a critical reference point for understanding current teacher pay. The average annual teacher salary has increased significantly, from $51,500 in 2019-20 to more than $60,000. But this figure represents a state average, masking substantial pay variability across districts, with many educators earning well less than this benchmark.

Adding to these concerns, a recent report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, published this past August, highlights a longstanding decline in interest in teaching. The share of bachelor’s and master’s graduates has sharply declined since the 1970s, when a quarter of college graduates earned education degrees.

**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 – November 4, 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.

This week's post focuses on Tuesday's (November 5, 2024) election.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Braun claims to want to raise teacher salaries, but he also wants tax cuts that will make that all but impossible. Look closely at his agenda, and you’ll see he wants to increase funding for some schools and teachers, those that he deems effective. In other words, teachers and public schools will fight each other – and private schools – for what money is available.

In his TV ads, Braun says he will “fix the schools” – an extraordinary admission that Indiana schools are broken after 14 years of Republican rule and one supposed fix after another." -- Steve Hinnefeld in School Matters Blog post, Teachers should lead charge for McCormick, Wells

JENNIFER MCCORMICK FOR GOVERNOR

The 2024 election in Indiana will determine the direction of public education for the next two to four years. Republicans have controlled the governor's office and both of Indiana's legislative houses for the last two decades. Each election season they promise to "fix" the public schools with privatization schemes (vouchers and charters) and laws stripping autonomy and power from the state's experts in education -- its teachers.

It's ironic then, that Republican Gubernatorial candidate (and current U.S. Senator) Mike Braun is still talking about "fixing" the schools.

We have given the Republicans enough time. Give Democrats a chance at the Governor's office and legislature. Support public education in Indiana.

Teachers should lead charge for McCormick, Wells

From School Matters

Twelve years ago, Hoosier teachers and their families and friends rose up and got a Democrat elected to a state office, the last time that’s happened. Outraged at the policies and rhetoric of Republican Tony Bennett, Hoosiers ousted him as superintendent of public instruction and chose Glenda Ritz.

The same thing should happen on Nov. 5. Mike Braun, the GOP candidate for governor, and Todd Rokita, the Republican seeking re-election as attorney general, would be much worse for public schools and educators than Bennett ever was.

Braun, a current U.S. senator and former state legislator, just doesn’t seem interested in education. He’s outsourced his policy proposals to a political action committee headed by conservative super-lawyer Jim Bopp. His top plan is to “expand school choice,” extending public funding of private school tuition to the very wealthiest families.

Braun claims to want to raise teacher salaries, but he also wants tax cuts that will make that all but impossible. Look closely at his agenda, and you’ll see he wants to increase funding for some schools and teachers, those that he deems effective. In other words, teachers and public schools will fight each other – and private schools – for what money is available.

In his TV ads, Braun says he will “fix the schools” – an extraordinary admission that Indiana schools are broken after 14 years of Republican rule and one supposed fix after another.

The Indiana GOP's forgotten word

From John Crull in the Statehouse File dot com

At the last Indiana gubernatorial debate, Libertarian candidate Donald Rainwater made a telling point.

The Republican candidate, U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana, had tried to blame Hoosier Democrats—and Democratic standard-bearer Jennifer McCormick in particular—for the defects in state public policy.

Rainwater replied by saying, in effect, “That’s rich.”

Then he pointed out that Republicans such as Braun have occupied the governor’s office for the past 20 years. The GOP has owned a supermajority in the Indiana House of Representatives for the past decade and the same supremacy in the Indiana Senate for even longer.

NATIONAL ELECTION

On November 5, vote for the well-being of children

From the Network for Public Education

Earlier this year, the Board of Directors of the Network for Public Education Action endorsed Kamala Harris for President and Tim Walz for Vice President of the United States.

Our endorsement was as much a rejection of Donald J. Trump as it was an embrace of the Harris/Walz pro-public education ticket. There can be no romanticization of the Trump years. His choice of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, a zealot for private school vouchers, damaged the public’s faith and allegiance to public schools. They sought to slash federal education funding in every budget proposal. Ms. DeVos has made it clear she would be eager to return to the job to dismantle the Department of Education and public education itself.

Brookings Institution: What Project 2025 Means for Education

Just say "NO!" to Project 2025.

From Diane Ravitch

A group of scholars at the Brookings Institution analyzed Project 2025’s proposals for education and their implications.

What struck me as most bizarre about Project 2025 was not its efforts to block-grant all federal funding of schools, nor its emphasis on privatization of K-12 schools. (Block-granting means assigning federal funding to states as a lump sum, no strings attached, no federal oversight).

No, what amazed me most was the split screen between the report’s desire to hand all power over education to states and communities, and the report’s insistence on preserving enough power to punish LGBT students, especially trans students and to impose other far-right mandates, like stamping out critical race theory. You know, either you let the states decide or you don’t. The report wants it both ways.

It’s also astonishing to realize that the insidious goal of the report is eventually abandon federal funding of education. That’s a huge step backward, taking us to 1965, before Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose purpose was to raise spending in impoverished communities. I essence, P2025 says that decades of pursuing equitable funding “didn’t work,” so let’s abandon the goal and the spending.

LOCAL NEWS

Fort Wayne Community Schools board advances $12 million in various projects

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

About $12 million in various Fort Wayne Community Schools capital improvements – including upgrades at three high school auditoriums – advanced this week with board approval of the projects’ architect/engineer...

..The board didn’t elaborate Monday on the proposed work, which was described in meeting documents as eight projects addressing building envelopes, general building systems and mechanical and electrical needs, among others.

Together, the construction contracts are estimated to cost nearly $12 million, with individual projects ranging from $271,300 for flooring at unspecified locations to $2.48 million for heating, ventilation and air conditioning improvements at the Helen P. Brown Natatorium.

**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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