Peter Greene has the great advantage of classroom experience when he evaluates shiny new ideas. The latest in Ohio is an unfounded mandate concocted by Andrew Brenner, the chairman of the Ohio House Education and Career Readiness Committee in the state legislature. Brenner previously called public schools “socialist” and is a strong supporter of privatization. In this post, Peter shows the underside of the latest “reform.”

He writes:

The Ohio legislature is considering a bill that will require schools to provide students with free “high-dosage tutoring” that will be subject to Department of Education and Workforce auditing along with a new professional development program for math teachers. The legislators have not included funding for any of this. Not a cent. It is the very definition of an unfunded mandate.

As reported by Laura Hancock at Cleveland.com:

“Our educational system must be responsive to the needs of our students,” bill sponsor Sen. Andrew Brenner, a Delaware County Republican, said earlier this year during bill testimony. “In this last year alone, we have significantly increased the amount of funding each student receives for their education, provided resources for tutoring services, and made high quality instructional materials available while identifying methods of instruction that most benefit students. If we are unable to say that our students who need the most help are in fact receiving that assistance from their school, then we are putting the interests of adults ahead of the needs of children.”

Lordy, it’s like a word salad made out of some of the most popular baloney talking points. “Putting the interests of adults ahead of the needs of children.” You know, like teachers with their need to be paid for extra hours of work. Mind you, putting the needs of adult politicians to look like they’re bravely Doing Something about education ahead of actually supporting that education– that kind of adults-first posturing is perfectly okay.

Brenner was a realtor and insurance salesman before he ascended to the legislature in 2019. He has a Masters in Ed in Leadership from far-right Christian nationalist Liberty University. In 2020, he warned that the state was going to become Nazi Germany over the Covid rules.

The bill at least exempts schools from providing these services for IEP students.

But it assumes that high-dosage tutoring is a real thing, without noting that it is hard and expensive to scale up.

This is the story of education a million times– some legislator gets a bright idea and declares “Let’s require schools to fix this” while waving vaguely in the direction of schools. And while this bright idea may require more resources and human-hours, that lawmaker will be confident that this whole new program can be implemented for free. Rick Hess has often said that you can force folks to do something, but you can’t force them to do it well. That is doubly true when you make zero effort to provide them with the resources needed to implement the program.

Doesn’t matter. Lawmakers will sign the bill (already through the Senate and headed through the House) and congratulate themselves on solving an education problem. For those who, like many Ohio legislators, would like to gut public education, the school’s failure to do a great job implementing the unfunded mandate is just more fodder for the “We gave them money and they didn’t perform magical pedagogical feats” argument used to discredit and dismantle public schools.

Would more no-cost tutoring be great? Sure, though I’d rather it were employed in a more useful cause than raising Big Standardized Test scores. And if you are undertaking a program that essentially increases the number of teacher hours in a day while simultaneously lowering the student-teacher ratio–well, if you are at all serious about it, you come armed with a big pile of money.

The Ohio legislature is not serious about this, but it will be a serious problem for schools.

But hey– they’re probably pre-occupied with the question of whether or not the state will be allowed to buy the obscenely wealthy owners of the Browns a new stadium with $600 million of taxpayer money. Gotta focus on important stuff that deals with the real interests of adults.

Elizabeth Huebeck of Education Week reported on an exciting development: the return of play-based learning in Connecticut.

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind more than twenty years ago, play has been pushed out of the curriculum in the early years, replaced by test-based, standardized accountability.

But Mansfield Elementary School in northeastern Connecticut provides a demonstration of the power of play. The children are motivated, engaged in play, and learning.

Huebeck wrote:

When the doors to Mansfield Elementary School in northeastern Connecticut officially opened to students in the 2023-24 school year, Principal Kate McCoy had a lot to be excited about.

She looked forward to building a new school community for the estimated 550 students coming together from three former area schools that had closed due to aging infrastructures and declining enrollment. And she appreciated how the building’s features—abundant natural light, a patio for outdoor learning, a dedicated LEGO room, and the neighboring Mansfield Hollow State Park, whose 250-plus acres allow for easy access to class hikes and other outdoor activities—would support her primary goal as an elementary school leader: to create a culture of joy for students.

The timing was right. 

In 2023, Connecticut passed legislation mandating a return to a teaching approach for young learners that has eroded across the country in the wake of more rigorous academic expectations: guided play.

“I believe elementary schools need to be places where we build joy, and play is how we can get there,” said McCoy. “Pushing play was part of our dialogue from the get-go.”

McCoy’s message, and the state’s newly implemented legislation, are a part of the growing pushback to the “academization” of kindergarten. Over the past couple decades, educators in the early grades have increasingly introduced literacy and math standards with an eye toward preparing students for the grades, and standardized tests, ahead. Explorative, imaginative play that once dominated early-elementary classrooms has been de-emphasized, teachers say. 

But while rigorous academic standards in the early grades may be here to stay, how schools best support students in reaching these standards isn’t set in stone.

“The academic rigor of kindergarten has changed, but that does not mean that play should be removed,” McCoy said. “When children find joy at school, they are more willing to take risks, persevere, and engage in challenging learning.”

Connecticut educators pushed for legislation that reintegrates play in early grades

Members of the Connecticut Education Association pushed hard for the 2023 legislation that reinstated play in early-elementary classrooms. To bolster its argument, the association surveyed the state’s K-3 teachers and found that the teachers reported dramatic declines in play, coinciding with a rise in direct instruction and test preparation. The survey also noted a significant increase in behavioral problems and more anxiety in the early grades in recent years.

Joslyn DeLancey, who taught elementary school in Connecticut public schools for 15 years before joining the state teachers’ union as vice president in 2021, witnessed firsthand such changes sweep through kindergarten programs. The school day went from a half day to a full day. Teachers were told by school leaders to remove from their classrooms blocks, dress-up materials, and other sources of imaginative play. 

“Then they really started pushing these forced scripted curriculums and teaching to the test and really just took all of the play out of the classroom,” she said.

That’s starting to change. The Constitution State’s law, which went into effect July 2024, requires public elementary schools to provide play-based learning for kindergarten and preschool students and permits teachers in grades 1-5 to incorporate play-based learning. 

DeLancey continues to support the law’s implementation, offering professional development workshops for elementary school educators on play-based learning.

The Mansfield school system has emerged as a key partner in the association’s efforts to educate teachers on how to incorporate guided play into the curricula. In the summer of 2024, the district, which serves just under 1,000 students, collaborated with the union to host two days of professional learning on developmentally appropriate guided play aligned to academic standards.

That professional learning continues. “Through ongoing professional development, coaching, and collaboration, play-based learning continues to deepen across our school,” McCoy said.

Teachers at Manchester Elementary report that, in the brief time that they’ve been encouraged to deliberately weave guided play into academic lessons, they’re seeing how it benefits their young students—namely, igniting their innate curiosity and reducing feelings of academic pressure.

Using imaginative, playful lessons to make learning stick

For veteran teachers at Mansfield Elementary like Erika LaBella, the changes couldn’t come soon enough.

“What I’m teaching kindergartners now is what I was teaching 1st graders many moons ago,” LaBella said. “We were slowly watching ourselves move away from play. Then Kate brought this [new instruction] back to us and said, ‘We can incorporate play into our academics,’ and that’s what we’ve all been able to do—find a way to have the kids be joyful throughout the whole day, instead of just having one little isolated time to go play.”

That joyfulness can extend even to the more mundane lessons, like learning new vocabulary, which historically has involved word lists and rote memorization. Courtney Ramsdell, a kindergarten teacher at Mansfield Elementary, has found a better way to get new vocabulary to stick for her young students.

She starts with a focus wall that relates to a specific lesson. In the fall, for instance, Ramsdell’s focus wall centered on a pumpkin patch that doubled as an interactive learning board. The soil for the pumpkin patch required nutrients—a vocabulary word whose meaning made sense to students in the context of growing pumpkins. These nutrients made the soil fertile, another vocabulary word. The students labeled the different parts of the pumpkin patch with their newly acquired vocabulary and added to it throughout the fall. 

“It continued to grow so far above and beyond what the actual curriculum required,” Ramsdell said.

In Kate Harbec’s 2nd grade class at Mansfield Elementary, students in December learned both math principles and vocabulary while building gingerbread people. She first introduced to students the concept of polygons, then, quadrilaterals. She then tested students’ knowledge by spreading out dozens of polygons made out of felt and having students form gingerbread people using only the quadrilateral-shaped pieces.

“They had to think about what the attributes of a quadrilateral were. And by the end of 15 minutes, every kid could tell you that a quadrilateral had four sides,” Harbec said. “It was just a fun, engaging way for them to apply it right away.”

Learning through play takes the pressure away

In most school settings, students learn from a young age that there is a right and a wrong answer. This knowledge can quickly become a source of stress or anxiety. 

Students might become fixated with getting the right answer and the best grades. Getting the answer wrong often enough can lead students to lose confidence, become convinced that they’re not good at school, and even stop trying altogether. On the contrary, teaching concepts via playful exploration encourages academic inquiry and stamina, Harbec said.

In science, her 2nd graders are learning about matter and properties by building toys. 

“Because it’s playful, when things fall apart, they’re like, ‘OK, I can fix it,’” Harbec said. “It’s a natural way to work on growth mindset and learning, because they don’t feel like they’re right or wrong. It’s all about the process along the way.”

Fixating on getting the “right” answer can derail the learning progress for even very young students. So too can hyperawareness of one’s rank within a classroom. Harbec uses games to circumvent this issue as her students strengthen their math skills.

“One group might be playing with cards or dice with higher numbers to make it more challenging for them. The kids are all just thinking they’re playing this game. And if you come into the room, you think everybody is doing exactly the same thing, but you actually have groups of kids working at their best level,” Harbec said. “It’s a natural way to differentiate.”

Early reports show strong performance at Mansfield Elementary

Mansfield Elementary teachers consistently report high student engagement, collaboration, oral language, and confidence, said McCoy, the school’s principal.

In 2023-24, the school’s first full year, Connecticut’s School Performance Index (SPI) showed that Mansfield Elementary students, outperformed state averages in English/language arts by 10.5 percentage points—74.4% compared with 63.9%. The following year, the school’s SPI score in ELA rose to 77.5%, the highest in both the district and the state. 

Thirty-two percent of the school’s students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and 10% identify as English learners. 

Meanwhile, in 2023-24, the school’s math SPI score was 74.4%, compared with the district’s overall score of 72.2% and the state’s average score of 60.2%. In 2024-25, the school again outperformed all other schools in the state, with a math SPI score of 75.5%.

Based on state assessment results, Mansfield Elementary has been recognized as a School of Distinction for the past two years. 

“This reinforces that centering joy and play does not mean lowering expectations,” McCoy said. “It means creating the conditions where students can do the hard work of learning.”