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).
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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.Here's what some states are doing in America...
So what do you do in America, he asked?
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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