Archives for the month of: March, 2021
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Florida: Republicans Plan to Eviscerate Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2021 //
13

Kathleen Oropeza, parent activist in Florida, explains in The Progressive how Republicans intend to destroy public schools and turn the state into a publicly-funded voucher haven. Governor Ron DeSantis is accomplishing Betsy DeVos’s dream while tossing aside the future of the state’s children. In Florida, public schools are held accountable for students and teachers but in private and religious schools, no accountability or standards are required.

Oropeza writes:

In what state Senator Perry Thurston calls a “death knell,” the 2021 Florida House and Senate are fast-tracking the passage of SB 48. This bill will convert the state’s five vouchers into two Education Savings Account/Debit Cards paid, for the first time, with public school tax dollars and a spending flexibility so wide that parents are not even required to pay for teachers or tuition.

Vouchers provide parents with public money to pay for private, often religious schools, with little accountability or guarantee of quality, in eighteen states. Florida leads the way, ahead of other states like Arizona, in how to “choice” parents out of public education and into private school voucher programs. Today, Florida operates two Exceptional Student Educationvouchers, the McKay and Gardiner, plus the Corporate Tax Credit, Hope and Family Empowerment, for a total of five vouchers. The goal has always been to significantly expand the base of students giving up their right to a free public education in exchange for granting parents the freedom to spend their child’s money as they see fit. 

To accelerate the growth of vouchers, Florida seeks to convert all five programs into Education Savings Account/Debit Cards, funded directly by state general revenues. This money will not be spent on public schools. Instead, “parents can use the funds to pay for a variety of educational services, including private school tuition, tutoring, online education, home education, curriculum, therapy, postsecondary educational institutions in Florida and other defined educational services.

The bill, modeled after legislation created by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, represents the unfinished business of former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the late libertarian economist Milton Friedman, and a host of rightwing philanthropists from the Waltons to the Kochs. 

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Privatization, Vouchers

Michael J. Hynes: Beware the College Board Dragon!

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2021 //
30

Dr. Michael J. Hynes is superintendent of the Port Washington school district on Long Island in New York. He previously posted here his proposal for a new vision of education.

He writes here about the College Board, which has become the gatekeeper whose tests decide which students go to which colleges.

He writes:

The College Board Monster and Why It’s Time to $lay the Dragon (at least during a pandemic)

Michael J. Hynes, Ed.D.

Reader beware. I wrote a scathing diatribe about the College Board a few years ago. I have since updated it as we enter testing season this spring.

Before you read my thoughts about the educational sacred cow and standardized testing machine known as the College Board, you should know up front that I am no fan of the College Board CEO/President David Coleman who years ago was the architect of Common Core. I felt this way before the pandemic and feel even more strongly about it now.

Most of us in the educational world know of the Common Core State Standards and the “test focused education reform movement” that accompanied it as a fiasco that plagued American schools.

Mr. Coleman was on the English Language Arts writing team and his good friend and eventual partner at Student Achievement Partners (SAP) Jason Zimba was a leader on the Common Core Mathematics team. Student Achievement Partners is a non-profit organization that researches and develops achievement based assessment standards.

Interesting enough, it was funded in large part by Bill Gates. The final nail in the coffin for me was when I realized Mr. Coleman, his former assistant and Mr. Zimba were founding board members for Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, an organization that lobbies for standards driven educational reform.

Do you see a pattern?

Years later Mr. Coleman still leads the College Board money-making machine and this educational monolith is the church where most public schools worship several times a year.

For the reader who doesn’t know what The College Board is: it is the ultimate gatekeeper and judge-jury-executioner for millions of students each year who dream to enter college and it literally is a hardship for many families due to the test taking expense.

Schools and families have no other choice because there is no other game in town, aside from a student taking the ACT exam.

The College Board claims to be a non-profit organization, but it’s hard to take that claim seriously when its exam fees for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), Advanced Placement test (AP), services for late registration, score verification services and a multitude of other related fees are costing families and schools millions of dollars each year.

Eleven years ago this “non-profit” made a profit of $55 million and paid nineteen College Board Executives’ salaries that ranged from three hundred thousand dollars to over one million dollars a year.

That trend continues today.

Cost aside, it is hard to fathom and understand how the College Board has claimed a monopoly-like status over our public school system.

Over the years it has literally convinced school administrators, school board trustees, teachers, parents and students they can’t live without what they sell. They sell classes and tests to schools like Big Pharma sells pills to consumers.

They sell as much as they can and jack up the prices just enough where most people won’t complain. They have convinced my beloved public education system, the university system and pretty much the solar system that if students don’t take the PSAT, the SAT and now multiple Advanced Placement tests during a child’s tenure in high school, then those students won’t be competitive and have the same opportunities to be successful in life as the ones who drink the College Board Kool-Aide.

I fear too many of us have bought this story hook, line and sinker without many of us asking the question…why and how did we let this get so out of control?

We now know there are over 800 colleges (and counting) that are SAT optional or flexible. We also know that AP classes and tests have doubled over the past ten+ years. Over four million tests are administered each year.

If you do the simple math (4 million tests x $94.00 a test = over $376 million a year). And that’s just the AP exam…the money from the AP exams go to the College Board and a students’ score is sent to the student but they never know what questions they got right or wrong, they just receive a score of 1-5. The reality is many schools get great marks for enrolling more AP students and the College Board makes a ton of money off this arrangement.

What a sham.

The problem I have with College Board is the effect and infection it’s created on the climate within school systems and their respective communities. We have reached a crescendo of students and families believing that “more is more” when it comes to prepping for the PSAT/SAT tests.

The SAT (with the optional essay) can be taken several times throughout a student’s high school career. If you do the simple math (1.7 million tests x $64.50 a test = $109 million a year). This does not include the other fees attached to the SAT test or the prep books or courses a student may take. If your child is applying to many colleges, you will pay for each score sent to them. 

Here is an example of how much it costs for SAT prep courses:

There are some SAT prep centers that cost upwards of $1800 per in-person course to online courses that cost up to $1400 per course. One-on-One tutoring can cost up to $200 an hour. This all adds up very fast. More important, how is this not seen as an equity concern? Many families can’t afford this type of assistance and since so much is at stake for successful college acceptance, it’s criminal unless the system truly changes. 

As a school superintendent I see and hear about many families hiring tutors for PSAT tests (sometimes starting in eighth grade) and many young men and women taking AP classes because they are “weighted” which bolsters their academic transcript and grade point average.

Most troublesome to me is when I’m told by families that enroll their children in multiple AP classes each year; taking so many AP classes provides a “badge of honor” for both the family and student. In some school districts you have communities that have bred and unleashed a “Keep up with the Joneses” phenomenon. All at the expense for what?

If this is true, what are the unintended consequences? Mental health has never been more important. When students take multiple AP classes and have four hours of homework and skip lunch every day, who suffers in the end? When a student feels like they have to take multiple AP classes to keep their class ranking high and take as many classes as possible to receive college credit so they potentially save money when they go to college, what are they losing in the present moment when they are still in high school?

I believe we have more stressed out and anxious children in our high schools than ever before.

This is a big reason why.

I offer some sincere observations sprinkled in with some facts…

1. AP classes have a lot of material with not much time to teach and truly understand it. Don’t get me wrong, many of the courses are wonderful and stretch our student’s worldview and cognitive abilities, but the courses end in early May. They don’t have the same amount of time as other students who take courses throughout the year. IN NY they have almost two months of school left!

2.  Students are over burdening themselves with the belief that 8-10 AP courses guarantees them access to a high performing university or academic scholarships. I don’t believe that’s true.

One thing I can guarantee this type of course load will provide is 4 hours or more of homework every night and not enough time for students to take electives they will enjoy.

Also, a friend of mine and I agree that the college acceptance process is so badly and deeply damaged, that kids should know that lots of AP classes will not help them as much as they think.

3.  If schools had the courageous conversation to eliminate class ranking, eliminate the weighting of AP classes and mandate lunch for every student, I believe we will have healthier and happier kids. U.S. News and World Report must stop using AP courses as part of their criteria in ranking the top high schools in America.

If they care about college readiness so much, how about looking at more important factors for success such as a student’s emotional, social and physical growth.

It would paint a much more effective predictor of college readiness and future success.

4. Schools must do a better job of promoting predictors of success that are not affiliated with the College Board. Universities want to see that students are more than AP test taking machines:1. GPA (grade point average) is a much better predictor of college success2. Rich and eclectic electives – take risks and explore new opportunities3. Play a sport – physical growth is just as important as academic growth4. Join clubs – a great way for students to get their social and emotional needs met5. Join outside school organizations in the community – fosters empathy6. Work after school part time – teaches responsibility

A few years ago, Mr. David Coleman once said, “Never give someone only one chance to be great.”

I couldn’t agree more but we know the College Board stands to make millions of dollars off of a child’s second chance by taking the SAT or AP test(s) multiple times a year.

If the College Board is really looking to provide better opportunities for students, why not make the test fee reasonable? I know they offer reduced pricing for some hardships but why not make a flat fee for all students? I thought the purpose of a non-profit was to not make a profit…especially off of children.

Finally, if information needs to be sent from the College Board to anywhere the family needs, make it a free service.

I have a problem when non-educators make decisions in my educational arena.

David Coleman and the College Board are not educators, they are business-people. As a parent, would you bring your child to a businessperson instead of a pediatrician if your child was sick? Would you find it odd that your child’s teacher or principal was a businessperson and not an educator?

So the obvious next question is. why is it widely accepted that we have business-people who run an educational institution that has such a significant influence over our children’s futures, a families’ pocketbook and total domination over the last two-three years of your child’s high school experience?

Mr. Coleman, please help me understand how these tests have not been placed on hold during this pandemic. Students are fighting for their lives. They are living in incredibly difficult times where the importance of mental health is at an all-time high but our children’s mental health is at an all-time low. 

The College Board has fleeced us all and its time we fight back against our over reliance on this monopoly.

Categories Accountability, Standardized Testing

Arkansas: Voucher Forces Trying Again, Backed by Walton Money

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
8

Max Brantley writes in the Arkansas Times that the voucher lobby is determined to reverse their 44-52 loss in the Arkansas House. Backed by Walton money, they are naming and shaming the legislators who stood up for their community’s public schools.

Although Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, and his children attended public schools, they are determined to destroy public schools that provide the same opportunity for other people’s children. They blithely toss out millions to buy the support of people who have no heart or soul and will gladly lobby to harm the institution that has been an abiding symbol of our democracy for generations. Public schools have failings, like every other institution. They must be far better, and they should have the respect and the funding to provide equal opportunity to all children.

But the Waltons have led the forces of greed that seek to undermine public schools that accept all students and have standards for professionals. Let me tell you what I think of the Waltons: I think they are greedy. I think they don’t care about other people’s children. They hate unions and public schools. They love privately managed charter schools, vouchers,and any other substitute for the public schools they attended. They treat everyone else as peasants. They are arrogant. They are prideful.

The Waltons represent the worst of American society: people who have become fabulously wealthy by killing small towns, driving small stores out of business, underpaying their one million employees, using their vast wealth to impoverish others and to undermine the community institutions that enrich the lives of people they treat with contempt. For them and their ilk, playing with the lives of other people’s children is a hobby, a pastime. They are very, very rich, and they must have their way. They don’t understand why the peasants refuse to bow down to their wishes.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Kentucky: Educators Dismayed by Rushed Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
8

Educators in Kentucky expressed their opposition to the voucher legislation that was rushed through the Legislature without careful deliberation of its likely negative impact on the state’s public schools. Nor was there any discussion of the research showing the harm that vouchers do to the children that use them or the high attrition rates of voucher schools.

Acting Fayette Superintendent Marlene Helm on Tuesday issued a strong statement before the House and Senate approved a bill in which private school tuition in Fayette and other counties could be paid from newly created education opportunity accounts.

“Quite honestly, I am dismayed that a bill of this magnitude has been brought forward this late in the session without thorough, public discussion with various stakeholders,” Helm said.

In addition to Fayette, Jefferson and Kenton counties, House Bill 563 now adds Boone, Hardin, Daviess, Warren and Campbell counties — all with populations of 90,000 — to those in which private school tuition amounts can be paid out of the scholarship funds.

The Kentucky Senate Appropriations and Revenue committee passed the bill 6-2. Later, the full Senate approved it with a 21-15 vote as did the House 48-47 in a marathon session Tuesday, the last day of the General Assembly before the veto recess. The bill will now be sent to the Governor for signing. Lawmakers will come back on March 29 and 30 to override any gubernatorial vetoes.

“This bill is dangerous. This bill is bad education policy. It’s bad fiscal policy. And its bad public policy. It does nothing to protect our students and their families or to assure that they receive a high quality education,” Kentucky Education Association President Eddie Campbell told the committee Tuesday…

In voicing his opposition, Campbell said private schools will be charging for many of the services that their tuition already covers. The services are already provided by public schools for free under the law, he said.

Campbell said the bill prohibits oversight of the education service provider that will receive the donations to distribute to families. He said providers are not required to have credentials or background checks. He said the bill opens the door for discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and other fronts…

Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass said he was concerned with the bill on multiple fronts.

“It is being rushed through the legislative process with little effort at gaining input or correction of obvious flaws and predictable negative consequences which the current language contains,” Glass said after the full House vote. “This legislation is of potentially enormous consequence – which begs a more thorough approach to considering both the public school choice and tax credit aspects.”

Jim Flynn, executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, said his group remains steadfast in their opposition to any privatization of public funds for education “–this bill provides that in the form of tax credits for education opportunity accounts.”

The lobbyist for the ultra-conservative, libertarian EdChoice organization, formerly the Rose and Milton Friedman Foundation, was delighted with passage of the voucher bill. EdChoice lobbies for privatization of public schools and th


Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article249964599.html#storylink=cpy



Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Kentucky, Privatization, Vouchers

Bad News in Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
17

Kentucky Republican legislators passed a voucher bill, which now goes to Democratic Governor Andy Bashear. The Governor will likely veto the bill, but the legislature can override his veto with a simple majority. This is the ultimate vengeance against teachers, who organized in 2018 to fight the Republican plan to change teachers’ pensions.

The rightwing group EdChoice, formerly the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation, was thrilled:

Public school supporters normally fight back in-person when pension reform and school choice are up for votes in Frankfort. But this year, Kentucky’s Capitol is closed to the public because of COVID-19, so the halls are empty. However, the bills dealing with those issues are still moving through.

“It’s a really big day,” said Andrew Vandiver with EdChoice Kentucky, a group that supports school choice.

After years of fighting for school choice, EdChoice Kentucky hoped to see it become law Tuesday.

“It’s just about fairness,” said Vandiver. “Trying to make sure that low to middle-income families have the same choice and opportunities that upper-income families have.”

There it is: the big voucher lie. Upper-income families spend $20,000-$30,000 for private-school tuition. Children with vouchers won’t be able to pay for the same schools as those chosen by upper-income families. Vouchers in Kentucky will be no greater, and probably less, than the cost of public school, likely $5,000 or less. Families can take their voucher to a low-quality religious school with uncertified teachers and principal, where they will be taught fake history and Biblical science.

A large body of research shows that vouchers have a negative impact on student achievement.

Categories Accountability, Kentucky, Vouchers

Good News in Arkansas: House Votes Down Voucher Expansion

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
1

Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times reported good news. A proposal to expand the state’s small voucher plan was rejected by the House. Republicans joined Democrats to provide the votes to defeat vouchers. Many rural Republicans don’t want to hurt their public schools.

He writes:

After more than an hour and a half of impassioned debate, the Arkansas House today defeated a bill to double from about 500 the number of students in Arkansas who could receive state money for vouchers to attend private schools. The vote was 44-52, with two voting present and two not voting.

A motion to clinch the outcome failed, so the bill may come up again. UPDATE: Here’s the roll call.

The debate covered familiar talking points, with some legislators repeating speeches they’d given when the bill cleared a House committee 11-9 yesterday.

Proponents hammered on choice and emphasized that the bill would favor lower-income families (though the income cutoff is higher than the average family income in Arkansas.)

Opponents emphasized the loss of funding for public schools and the measure’s  open-ended growth from an initial outlay of $4 million. They talked of uncertainty about what students would be chosen and about the lack of standards for private schools. (They’d need only be approved by a private association of private schools.)

I was particularly moved by a couple of opponents.Rep. Jim Wooten (R-Beebe) said the bill would be “the final nail driven in public education in this state.” It’s a progressive nibbling away, he said. “If you think these private schools are going to take every comer that comes to their door, you are fooling yourself.”

Rep. David Tollett (R-Lexa), a school superintendent, told of the private schools in the Delta, creatures of segregation. He challenged legislators to name a minority private school in the state. “This privatizes of public education. It is a nationwide movement. It has struck many different states and not one of them has been successful.” He did the compounding of the cost: at a 25 percent growth rate, it will reach $1 billion in time.

He read from studies showing harm to students from voucher programs, particularly Louisiana where voucher students ended up in many poor quality private schools.

He said the state could have simply lifted a cap on the existing voucher program, which targets students with disabilities. Why, Tollett asked, does it take a 29-page bill to change things. “It’s a Trojan horse,” he said. “It’s not about the children.” He and Wooten both noted the money spent on scholarships ($30 million, Wooten said) by private schools to recruit athletes for prize-winning teams.ADVERTISEMENT

Tollett also said a promise of money for public schools in the fund that will finance vouchers is an empty promise because the categorical programs are already covered by federal money directed to needy districts. Tollett also commented that heard some say a vote by a Republican was a vote contrary to the party platform. He said nobody had tried to tell him that. Republicans accounted for a majority of the no votes. There are only 22 Democrats in the House.

Categories Arkansas, Courage, Republicans, Vouchers

Politico: Give Bernie Sanders’ Credit for Pushing Biden Relief Bill

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
12

Politico writes that Senator Bernie Sanders deserves credit for key features of the $1.9 trillion Biden plan and for encouraging Biden not to compromise with moderate Republicans who offered a $900 billion plan.

Politico said:

 Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) played the most dramatic role during the passage of the Covid relief bill into law. But the senator with the greatest imprint on the script itself was his colleague on the opposite end of the Democratic ideological spectrum: Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 

Sanders’ influence on the most ambitious piece of domestic legislation in a generation is evident in several places, particularly the guaranteed income program for children, the massive subsidies for people to buy health care, the sheer size of the $1.9 trillion measure and the centerpiece of it — direct checks to working Americans. 

But the specifics of the law tell only part of the story. The calculus by which the legislation was crafted and passed — a belief that popular bills endure more than bipartisan ones — is quintessentially Sanders. And it raises a thought-provoking question: Has any elected official in American history had such a profound influence on a major political party without ever formally joining it? 

Six years ago, Democrats were in a different place. Austerity politics were still gripping parts of the party. The ambitious agenda items were more social than economic: immigration reform, gun control, police reform after Ferguson. And in a few months time, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee would make serious inroads among the white working class voters who had served as the bedrock for Democrats for decades. 

Within that landscape, Sanders was a throwback: a labor-oriented big-government liberal who seemed like more of a gadfly than a serious player. He was known for passing little-noticed amendments but also found a knack for making well-noticed public spectacles, often as acts of disagreement with the Obama White House on items like domestic surveillance laws and the extension of the Bush tax cuts. As his following picked up, a depiction of him emerged as an ideologue who valued ideological purity over progress and was content to undermine a historic president in the service of it.

That never jibed with reality. Though admittedly stubborn, Sanders voted often for major bills that fell short of his ambitions (Obamacare), cut deals that went against his ideology (VA reform), and made sure his public shows of opposition didn’t actually turn into catastrophes for the Democratic Party. When his legislative white whale (a $15-an-hour minimum wage hike) was nixed by the parliamentarian a few weeks back, he could have insisted that his fallback option be given a vote. He didn’t, calculating that it wasn’t worth jeopardizing or delaying the entire enterprise over the minimum wage. As one Sanders aide described it: “He knows when to throw down and when it’s time to get s— done…”

The Democratic Party today holds razor-thin majorities in both chambers and is helmed by a president who might have been the most moderate of the 20 or so candidates who ran in the primary. And yet every single member — save one in the House — voted for a nearly $2 trillion deficit-financed bill that sends money without strings attached to the poorest Americans, all while embracing a unionization effort targeting the biggest e-commerce giant in the world and entertaining a $4 trillion follow-up bill to revamp American infrastructure that will likely include tax hikes on the rich. If Sanders was just a touch more extroverted, we’d likely see signs of euphoria in Burlington.

Of course, credit (or, if you’re so inclined, blame) isn’t his alone. The enlarged child tax credit has been the project of countless Democrats, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). The bill’s $86 billion bailout for multi-employer pensions was spearheaded by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). And none of it would have been possible without twin Senate wins in Georgia or Biden’s insistence that he needed to go big out the gate. 

But, it’s worth recalling, that Biden easily could have charted a bipartisan approach instead. In early December, Manchin and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) announced the outlines of a $900 billion relief bill of their own, with a splashy Washington Post op-ed framing it as the logical step toward ideological comity. Five other senators in the Democratic caucus were on board with the idea. 

Sanders rejected the proposal out of hand. His move sent an early signal to the White House that it would have to scramble for votes even on a center-of-the-road approach. Weeks later, the Georgia election happened, Biden stuck to the script that bigger was better, and the pieces of a $1.9 trillion package — upon which the success of the Demcratic Party now hangs — fell into place.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Economy, Funding, Politics, Poverty, Sanders, Scandal, Unions

Success Academy Charter Chain Will Not Give State Tests This Year

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2021 //
4

Reema Amin, a reporter for Chalkbeat in New York, wrote on Twitter that the Success Academy charter chain will not administer the state tests this year. Do you think that any public school superintendents or principals will make the same decision and get away with it? Nah, we won’t take the state tests this year.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2021 //
13

The Kentucky legislature, controlled by Republicans, passed voucher legislation. The Governor, Democrat Andy Bashear, seems certain to veto it.

Linda Blackford of the Lexington Herald-Leader wonders why Republicans are both anti-public school and anti-teacher, since most of them graduated from public schools and send their own children there. Why are they so eager to take money away from their community schools to fund what are almost certain to be inferior choices? Is it revenge on teachers for leading protests against pension changes?

She writes:

Back in the 1990s, Kentucky was a shining model of a state that valued education. The Kentucky Education Reform Act revolutionized school funding by creating a central pot of property taxes rather than an uneven patchwork of rich and poor. There was much more: cracking down on corruption and nepotism, raising academic standards, new money for teacher training, important supports for struggling children.

But over the past two decades, the state’s politics have turned crimson and all that potential — and state support for it — is slipping away. Why do Republicans appear to dislike and distrust public schools so much? Is it because their teachers are represented by politically powerful unions that happened to get our Democratic unicorn governor elected? Is it because those unions negotiated pretty good pension promises? Is it because they resisted reopening schools? Is it because the very notion of public education recognizes that government can do good things? 

“I think what you see is a demonization of public education that’s coming from all these right wing groups,” said Nema Brewer, a co-founder of 120 Kentucky United, an education advocacy group that helped defeat Republican plans for teacher pensions and elect Beshear in 2019. “The Republican Party of Kentucky has bought into this demonization of public schools, completely forgetting the majority of them are products of public schools. It’s just amazing to me that this is what’s happened.”

Those Republicans got their political revenge on Tuesday night when they passed House Bill 563, what’s known as a “neo-voucher bill.” It hurts teachers and rural school districts, while creating more segregation and less school funding, a veritable lottery for the GOP.

By now, the research on vouchers is compelling: they don’t raise the academic achievements of students. Voucher schools are typically inferior to public schools because they are free to hire uncertified teachers and principals. They discriminate at will. Why would Republicans think it was a good idea to waste public money on low-quality religious schools or to subsidize the tuition of students already in religious schools?


Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/linda-blackford/article249974744.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Kentucky, Privatization, Religion, Research, Separation of church and state

Don’t Believe the “Learning Loss” Hoax

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2021 //
106

The mainstream media are filled with warnings about “learning loss” and how we must measure it and why students should go to summer school to make up for what they have “lost.” If we can’t quantify it, they say, how can we know which students are behind? This is silly. There was no “pre-test,” so there can’t be a “post-test.” A test that students take this spring can’t possibly demonstrate “learning loss,” since they can’t be compared to anything else. If you want to know where students are in their learning, ask their teacher.

Here are some good readings on “learning loss.”

Peter Greene gathered some and calls his post a “learning loss debunkery reader.” And don’t miss Peter’s personal tale of his own “learning loss.” It began right after high school graduation, when he realized he had forgotten algebra!

Russ on Reading turned “learning loss” into a Henny Penny fable, in which the wolves are trying to get into the henhouse.

“Wait a minute. Are we sure our children have lost their learning? I know a year away from the schoolhouse is concerning. And I know the online learning is not as good as beak to beak learning, but just what are we worried about here. Our children are learning lots of things. They have learned how to make the best of a bad situation. They have learned how we all need to pitch in to help each other. They have learned to wear masks in public. They have learned a lot about communicable diseases. They may have different learning this year, but is that the same as losing learning?  Before we let the foxes into the hen house, we better be sure there is a big problem.”

The Zoom meeting went silent. Goosey Loosey shut down Foxy Loxy’s Zoom feed. She said, “You know maybe we have bigger things to worry about than learning loss. I am going to go read my chicks a book.”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, For-Profit, Standardized Testing, Students
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