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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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