In Case You Missed It – December 16, 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

"Consider the first sentence of this San Diego Union-Tribune, typical of school reporting: Unified finds literacy gaps in kindergarten and middle school:

Many San Diego Unified kindergartners are already arriving at school behind grade level in reading, and reading scores take a hit when students reach middle school, district testing data show.

How can kindergartners be behind when they haven’t started formal schooling?" -- Nancy Bailey in How Assessment and Data are Used to Stigmatize Children as Failing

WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE TO TESTING

How Assessment and Data are Used to Stigmatize Children as Failing

We haven't escaped from the damage done by No Child Left Behind. We're still overusing and misusing tests.

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

School districts continue to purchase high-cost commercialized tests that depersonalize teaching, stigmatize children and schools as failing, and build public distrust.

Assessment should inform educators and parents about where children are academically and behaviorally, but it doesn’t appear to improve learning.

Current tests appear to primarily be used to collect data, invading a child’s and family’s privacy. Such tests often stigmatize children as failing, and there are so many tests.

Aren’t there less costly methods that help teachers and parents understand how a child is doing that don’t share a child’s personal information, tests that lift children instead of disparaging them?

THE COMING ANTI-PUBLIC EDUCATION STORM

How will the Trump administration's education policies impact public education?

Will Trump Really End The Department Of Education

The plans are to leave schools alone and to micromanage them at the same time.

From Peter Greene in Forbes

The list of goals may or may not be current, but it underlines a basic contradiction at the heart of Trump’s education plans. The various goals can be boiled down to two overall objectives:

1) To end all federal involvement and oversight of local schools

2) To exert tight federal control over local schools

Trump has promised that schools will not teach “political indoctrination,” that they will teach students to be “love their country,” that there will be school prayer, that students will “have access to” project-based learning, and that schools will expel students who harm teachers or other students. He has also proposed stripping money from colleges and universities that indoctrinate students and using the money to set up a free of charge “world class education” system.

Above all, he has promised that he “will be closing up” the Department of Education. Of course, he said that in 2016 with control of both houses of Congress and it did not happen.

What Should We Be Watching For if Linda McMahon Is Confirmed as Education Secretary?

Do Republicans care about public education?

From Jan Resseger

...We ought to consider the implications when “outsiders” are appointed to manage the federal department which administers the myriad federal programs that shape opportunities for vulnerable students in public schools across the 50 states. At the center of every town and suburb and urban neighborhood, public schools are among our society’s most central and important civic and social institutions. Developed over the past two centuries, public schools are universally available and accessible, and they are institutions which, by law, must serve each child’s academic needs and must protect all students’ rights. In public schools our children come together to think, learn, and listen respectfully to others in schools served by credentialed professionals.

Trump and McMahon’s America First Agenda

Click this link to contact your legislators.

From Network for Public Education Action

Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, is the Board Chair of America First, which has an agenda for K-12 schools. It is filled with a subtle plan to defund public schools while exerting Soviet-style surveillance over what our teachers teach and students learn. Watch the video to learn more.

TEACHER SUES OVER LGBTQ+ BOOKS

Teacher Sues After Being Suspended for Having Books With LGBTQ+ Characters in Her Classroom

An Ohio teacher sues their school district.

From Religion Clause blog

A third-grade teacher in the southern Ohio village of New Richmond filed suit last week in an Ohio federal district court seeking damages for the 3-day suspension imposed on her for having four books in her classroom's book collection that have LGBTQ+ characters in them. The school claimed that the books violated the District's Policy 2240 on Controversial Issues in the Classroom.

GIFTS FOR TEACHER

Gifts of Christmas Past

"Teaching offers many very rewarding experiences, but it’s not and never has been about the great swag."

From Teacher in a Strange Land

In a holiday-themed archetype of legislative overreach, Alabama passed an ethics law back in 2011, forbidding K-12 school teachers from accepting expensive presents. Previous legislation set a $100 limit on individual gifts to public workers, but the 2011 law specified that gifts to teachers be limited to those of nominal value. The stated purpose: to reinforce ethical practices by state employees.

This was such a big deal that the AL Ethics Commission was receiving about 25 calls a day from parents who didn’t want to get their children’s teachers in trouble. The Ethics Commission released a detailed report, letting parents know that cookies, hand lotion and mugs are OK. What I found interesting was what was forbidden. Four examples: hams, turkeys, cash and “anything a teacher could re-sell.”

I was a classroom teacher for more than 30 years. I received hundreds of Christmas and end-of-year gifts over that time. And I never got a turkey or a ham. Maybe that’s an Alabama thing?

ALLEN COUNTY WELCOMES DOLLY PARTON'S IMAGINATION LIBRARY

ACPL launches Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library comes to Allen County.

From 21 Alive News

The Allen County Public Library has officially launched Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

The program provides free, age-appropriate books to local children from birth to age five.

Officials from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Indiana say Allen County experienced the second-highest registration numbers in the country in its first month of signing children up for the program.

Those interested in signing a child up for the program can do so here. It takes about eight to 12 weeks from enrollment for children to receive their first book, which they then receive monthly.

There is no cost to families.

^†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 – December 9, 2024

Here are links to articles from the last three weeks^† 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.

There are quite a few articles in this issue...presented to you with a minimum of quoting and no comments.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"...I want us to move beyond the last two decades of teach-to-the-test, which almost all of my students saw as a sign of disrespect, treating them like a test score. We all need to participate in cross-generational conversations on how we can do both – defeat the attempts by Ryan Walters to impose rightwing ideologies on our students, and build on their strengths and moral compass in order to prepare our kids for the 21stcentury." -- John Thompson in Will We Ever Get Free of NCLB’s Mandates and Let Teachers Teach?

POLITICS

Heather Cox Richardson: Eliminating the Department of Education?

From Diane Ravitch

Trump has promised to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. He needs Congressional approval to do it.

Tell Your Senators to Vote "No" for Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education

From Diane Ravitch

The Network for Public Education Action strongly opposes the nomination of Linda McMahon as U.S. Secretary of Education. Ms. McMahon is unqualified and inexperienced in school governance. She has demonstrated little interest in children or schools outside of a short, politically appointed stint on the Connecticut Board of Education.

What Trump 2.0 Could Mean for Public Education

From the Texas Observer

Houston native and education expert Diane Ravitch urges a fight for "the future of Texas, and for the future of the children" under Trump's proposed reforms.

Trump’s Threatened Immigration Deportations Would Traumatize Students and Disrupt Public Schools

From Jan Resseger

...Chalkbeat‘s Kalyn Belsha explores some recent history to remind readers about what happens when massive raids disrupt public schools and terrify children and adolescents: “When immigration agents raided chicken processing plants in central Mississippi in 2019, they arrested nearly 700 undocumented workers—many of them parents of children enrolled in local schools. Teens got frantic texts to leave class and find their younger siblings. Unfamiliar faces whose names weren’t on the pick-up list showed up to take children home. School staff scrambled to make sure no child went home to an empty house, while the owner of a local gym threw together a temporary shelter for kids with nowhere else to go. In the Scott County School District, a quarter of the district’s Latino students, around 150 children, were absent from school the next day. When dozens of kids continued to miss school, staff packed onto school buses and went door to door with food, trying to reassure families that it was safe for their children to return. Academics were on hold for weeks, said Tony McGee, the district’s superintendent at the time. “We went into kind of a Mom and Dad mode and just cared for kids,” McGee said. While some children bounced back quickly, others were shaken for months. “You could tell there was still some worry on kids’ hearts.”

Public Education: The Bully and the Dream

From Teacher in a Strange Land

...If all we’re doing right now (guiltily raising hand) is re-posting that video clip of Linda McMahon getting body-slammed, we’re not helping preserve, let alone improve, public education. When our focus is on fighting bad policy, especially policy that hasn’t yet been enacted, we need to have better ideas—dreams, if you will—about what public education should look like in our back pocket.

INDIANA NEWS

Braun education panel lacks educators

From School Matters

Something is missing from the education transition council that Indiana Gov.-elect Mike Braun appointed recently. Several things, actually.

It includes no teachers.

Indiana charter group to push for property tax revenue sharing

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

A recently formed group representing Indiana’s growing public charter school sector says it’ll push lawmakers to make traditional public schools share local property tax revenue.

Indiana Charter Innovation Center President and CEO Scott Bess said his group’s request starts with the core principle underlying Indiana’s approach to funding education: money follows the student.

OHIO NEWS

Ohio’s Legislators Focus on Culture Wars & Private School Vouchers. In Next Session, Will Legislators Fully Fund Public Schools?

From Jan Resseger

As the 135th Ohio General Assembly winds down its lame-duck session at the end of 2024, there is not a lot off cheerful and exciting news for the state’s public schools.

Ohio lawmakers move to override local control and mandate mix of religion with public school time

From Ohio Capital Journal

Funny how Republicans running red states have done a 180 on indoctrination of students in public schools — as long as it’s Bible-based indoctrination. Ohio appears on the verge of following Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and others in turning public schools into officially sanctioned Sunday schools with religious messages and mandates. The intensifying GOP push to incorporate more religion in public education is clearly an effort to indoctrinate students with preeminently Christian beliefs.

POST SECONDARY EDUCATION

Hechinger Report: Rural Students Lose Options, as Universities Cut Majors

From Diane Ravitch

A team of reporters at The Hechinger Report describe the damages of budget cuts at rural universities. The universities respond to declining enrollments and declining revenues by eliminating majors; students who want those majors are left in the lurch. Chemistry, science, math, foreign languages, philosophy, physics—Almost everything is on the chopping block somewhere.

LET TEACHERS TEACH

John Thompson: Will We Ever Get Free of NCLB’s Mandates and Let Teachers Teach?

From Diane Ravitch

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, wonders if the days of authentic teaching and learning will ever return. After a quarter-century of NCLB mandates, are there still teachers who remember what it was like in the pre-NCLB days. John does.

**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…

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).