In Case You Missed It – August 14, 2018

Most of NEIFPE's social media presence is on Facebook where we post links to articles and blogs dealing with the state of public education in the U.S. For those of you who are not on Facebook (or have left), we've gathered links to a few articles of interest to help you keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

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TEACHING ABOUT WHITE SUPREMACY

What white students still need to understand about white supremacy, a year after Charlottesville

From The Hechinger Report

I asked my students to attend a university-wide discussion of the white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville several weeks earlier, on August 12, 2017. I assumed that my students knew about the rally and its ramifications and so I did not offer any explanation. In fact, I didn’t tell my students much beyond the title, “Understanding Charlottesville.”

I was dismayed to note that few of my students showed up.

When we met again in class, I asked them what held them back. The room of mainly college sophomores was silent for a few moments, before a student told me that she didn’t know what “Charlottesville” was. I asked how many people were in the same boat. Every student raised his or her hand, except the students of color and the religious minorities.

FULL FUNDING, NOT CHARITY

Please Don't Warm My Heart

From Curmudgucation

Acts of charity belong in response to an unavoidable natural catastrophe, not the entirely predictable results of human-created policy. Lovable Mrs. McTeachalot shouldn't be receiving help from strangers to buy her teaching supplies because her school should be providing them in the first place. Doctors and nurses do not have to go shopping for bandaids and blood pressure cuffs to stock up their own offices. No business executive or government functionary buys office furniture out of his own pocket. Why do we accept that any teacher who wants a fully supplied classroom will, of course, be responsible for filling the gaps herself.

Why should we have to wait for a wealthy celebrity to pick up the slack for a public school that has not been properly funded? When was the last time you saw an ad from an army company saying, "We're still looking for a helpful philanthropist to buy us the supplies and equipment we need to do our jobs well." And when did you last see a Go Fund Me for a physician saying, "Please help me afford a car so I can get to work."

No. Every one of these heartwarming stories is the story of some group of politicians and policy makers who failed to properly fund the educational system.

LEBRON INSTEAD OF BETSY?

LeBron James for secretary of education? Thousands sign petition for him to replace Betsy DeVos.

From The Answer Sheet

LeBron James or Betsy DeVos? If you could pick from two candidates to be U.S. secretary of education and those were your candidates, whom would you pick?

That is the conceit of an online petition posted late Tuesday on Care2.com and titled “LeBron James for Secretary of Education.” By midday Thursday, there were 11,348 signatures, and the surge of signatures caused organizers to keep increasing their goal.

VOUCHER FAIL


Final Study: Private Voucher School Students Permanently Fall Behind Peers in Public School

From ISTA, The Indiana State Teachers Association

Indiana students in the state’s private school voucher program are falling behind in math and showing no improvement in Language Arts.

According to a just released study of the state’s private school voucher program, “the goal of improving the academic performance of low‐income students who use a voucher to move to a private school has not yet been realized in Indiana.”

See also: Updated Study Bears Bad News for Indiana Voucher Program

From Politico Morning Education

The final version of a high-profile study of Indiana’s private school voucher program finds that voucher students saw a drop in math scores and those losses persisted “regardless of the length of time spent in a private school.”

TESTING TROUBLES

College Board Botches the Scoring of the June 2018 SAT; Affected Test Takers Petition for Rescore

From Mercedes Schneider's Blog

... this most recent SAT chaos comes as no surprise:

Something fishy has occurred with the scoring of the June 2018 SAT. For example, test takers are getting more answers correct than they did on previous tests, only to find that their scores compared to previous administrations either flatlined or drastically dropped, and the explanation, “easier questions” does not account for the severity of the problem.

June 2018 SAT test takers are tweeting their displeasure. Still, on July 12, 2018, College Board tweets that nothing is wrong and that it “plans for consistency across administrations”...

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