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Houston: Democratic Legislators Demand an Investigation of Mike Miles’ Tactics

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2024 //
2

The Texas Education Agency, under Republican control, took over the entire Houston Independent School district last year because one high school—with disproportionate numbers of at-risk students—had low test scores for several years in a row. Even though that school, Wheatley High School, was showing marked signs of progress, State Commissioner Mike Morath, fired the elected school board and hired Mike Miles as superintendent with expansive powers and selected a hand-picked “board of managers.”

Morath, a software executive, was appointed by Governor Gregg Abbott, who surely enjoys punishing a mostly Black and Hispanic district that did not vote for him. Of course, Morath must know that state takeovers seldom lead to improvement. This is especially the case in a hostile takeover, like this one.

Houston Democrats are waking up and taking action. At last. How can they allow Gregg Abbott to do a hostile takeover of HISD and install a man with a grandiose sense of his own importance, a man who previously failed in Dallas? Given the Republican super-majority in the state and Abbott’s vengeful nature, there’s probably not much that can change his stranglehold over Houston’s public school students and teachers. But it’s always good to protest and make noise.

Several Houston-area Democratic legislators are calling for a formal hearing to address “potential violations of state law” in Houston ISD in the aftermath of the Texas Education Agency stripping elected leaders from the school district.

The lawmakers asked in a letter sent Friday that the House Committee on Public Education host a hearing to address reports of “unqualified, non-degree holding teachers” working in classrooms and a lack of accommodations for students with disabilities. They also requested independent research proving the benefits of state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles’ New Education System. 

The request comes after the state takeover of HISD in March 2023 and the Texas Education Agency’s appointment of the Superintendent and nine members of the Board of Managers. Due to the takeover, the nine lawmakers who signed the letter said it is “imperative that the state assume full responsibility for HISD students and hold the board of managers accountable”

“As their duly elected State Representatives, we must hold a hearing to learn more about these concerning reports and efforts to subvert state laws and requirements,” the letter states.

Reps. Christina Morales, Ann Johnson, Jarvis Johnson, Penny Morales Shaw, Mary Ann Perez, Jon Rosentahl, Shawn Thierry, Hubert Vo and Gene Wu all signed the letter, which was addressed to Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan and the House education committee. Phelan and TEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter. 

“Teacher reports and parent concerns are uncovering troubling developments at our schools,” Morales wrote in a statement. “The community can no longer vote on who represents us on the school board, so we as the state representatives must hold the appointed board accountable.”

In a response to the letter, HISD said it was going to stay focused on “the critical work of serving students and families,” and it had already seen positive impacts for kids after implementing reforms.

“HISD has invited dozens of elected and community leaders into our schools to see the work happening first-hand,” the district wrote. “We are pleased to share our progress with any other leaders who want to better understand what’s happening in the schools.”

Miles has implemented the New Education System program, a controversial model that includes standardized curriculum, the conversion of libraries to Team Centers and courses focused on critical thinking and the “Science of Reading,” at 85 schools this year. The campuses also have longer hours, timed lessons, higher pay for educators and additional staff who support teachers.

“Teachers have expressed that some of our most at-risk students are not receiving the services and support that they legally have the right to receive,” lawmakers wrote. “They have also shared with us that their students feel discouraged and constantly berated by the continuous assessments and instructional method prescribed in the New Education System.”

According to the letter, the district has circumvented the law requiring teachers to obtain a bachelor’s degree, a certification and other requirements to work in a classroom by assigning certified teachers as the teacher of record for more than one classroom.

“These efforts are not only detrimental to the continued learning and development of our students, but also a violation of state law,” lawmakers said.

The Democratic lawmakers also said the district has shared plans with teachers and administrators to address a teacher shortage by hiring community college students as teacher apprentices and learning coaches. 

Under the NES model, teacher apprentices work with teachers to plan and implement lesson plans, provide instruction and support classroom management, and they can serve as the teacher when the primary instructor is absent. Learning coaches provide support to teachers by supervising students, making copies, grading papers and completing paperwork.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Democrats, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Houston, State Takeover, Texas

North Carolina: Michelle Morrow Is Not Qualified to Be Superintendent of Public Instruction

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2024 //
2

Gwen Frisbie-Fulton is a columnist for the News & Observer in North Carolina. She explains in this column why extremist Michelle Morrow is unqualified to be elected as state superintendent of public instruction. What the public knows about her is that she homeschools her children, she has called the public execution of Obama, Biden, Clinton, and other leading Democrats. But there’s more.

Frisbie-Fulton writes:

After years of being a science nerd, devouring books about space and astrophysics, my son recently became very athletic. This came as a surprise — he comes from a long line of artists and wanderers.

I embraced this new development wholeheartedly and cheered enthusiastically for his team from the sidelines. Next to me, always, was his coach, yelling support until his throat was raw.

A book-smart high school logic teacher, his coach was also learning the sport. He threw himself all in, researching and bringing different hill sprints and threshold runs into their practices. He read, researched and frequently solicited advice from others. The team never became top- tier, but every single runner improved their times and they made it to the regionals. Measured by wins, he might not have been the greatest coach — but he was a very solid leader.

This year, North Carolinians will head to the polls. While elections are inherently about politics, we will also be tasked to determine which candidates are equipped to lead.

To lead, someone must of course be experienced, but he or she also must be curious and open to about the world around them. And that is why I think that my son’s coach — whose politics I disagree with substantially —would be a better, more qualified candidate for superintendent of public instruction than GOP nominee Michelle Morrow.

Experience matters in leadership and Michele Morrow’s experience is extremely limited. While my son’s coach spends nine hours a day at the school, plus another two hours outside it on practice days, Morrow has homeschooled her children. Nonetheless, she has formed rigid opinions about North Carolina’s public schools, calling them “socialism centers” and “indoctrination centers” (WRAL).

Morrow not only lacks experience with public education, but she also lives a life very distant from what most students who rely on our schools know. While my son’s coach lives in an apartment complex where, no doubt, many of his students also live, Morrow lives in a wealthy suburb of Raleigh in a house valued at more than twice the average North Carolina home. In contrast to the Morrows, nearly half of all students in North Carolina are considered economically disadvantaged (with family incomes less than 185% of the federal poverty line). Morrow might believe that “the whole plan of the education system from day one has actually been to kind of control the thinking of our young people” (WRAL), but she fails to understand the supportive, stabilizing impact of public schools in children’s lives.

Good leaders are curious. While my son’s coach has a lot of experience with kids and schools, he didn’t have a much experience coaching — which is why he read, researched and sought advice from others. Morrow appears curiously uncurious. Active on the internet, she puts herself in an echo chamber of views, falling victim to conspiracy theories. During the pandemic, she used the QAnon hashtag #WWG1WGA multiple times and she spread disinformation about vaccinations (Fox 8).

Offline, Morrow further surrounds herself with people who will reinforce, not challenge or grow, her understanding of the world. She was photographed at a far-right candidate training session alongside John Fisher, a Proud Boy, and Sloan Rachmuth, an extremist provocateur who famously trolls and harasses her opponents on social media. Morrow served on the board of one of Sloan’s anti-public education projects (Libertas Prep, which appears to have never launched) alongside extremist Emily Rainey, who at one point claimed to have information about the attack on Moore County’s electrical grid. This insular clique mimics one anothers’ anti-diversity, anti-LGBTQIA+, and anti-education stances, just as Morrow parroted insurrectionist talking points while filming herself on her way to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6: “If you’re going to commit treason, if you’re going to participate in fraud in a United States election, we’re coming after you,” she said into her livestream.

If you don’t have experience, and you don’t surround yourself with different ideas and opinions, you must at least have a deep, principled commitment to fight for everyone to be a leader. My son and his coach spar regularly about politics and culture, but he makes sure my kid is always included, respected and heard. On the contrary, Michele Morrow prides herself on her intolerance, calling repeatedly for the “execution” of people she disagrees with (CNN).

She supports banning Islam (HuffPost), though our state has the 10th-largest Muslim population in the country. She has made anti-inclusivity a cornerstone of her campaign, railing against the LGBTQIA+ community, saying “There is no pride in perversion” (Media Matters). Morrow’s ability to lead schools that include many Muslim and LGBTQIA children is, in a word, impossible.

Having opinions doesn’t make you a leader: Experience, curiosity and the desire to work for everyone does.

When fully funded and at their best, North Carolina’s schools are creating our state’s future leaders — and our students need to see what good leadership looks like. The many teachers and coaches who model good leadership to our children day in and day out are not running for office this year; unfortunately Michele Morrow is.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Home Schooling, North Carolina, Privatization

Peter Greene: Do You Really Want AI to Write Your lesson Plans?

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2024 //
92

Peter Greene warns teachers not to fall for the cheap and lazy artificial intelligence (AI) that designs lesson plans. He explains why in this post:

Some Brooklyn schools are piloting an AI assistant that will create lesson plans for them. 

Superintendent Janice Ross explains it this way. “Teachers spend hours creating lesson plans. They should not be doing that anymore.”

The product is YourWai (get it?) courtesy of The Learning Innovation Catalyst (LINC), a company that specializes in “learning for educators that works/inspires/motivates/empowers.” They’re the kind of company that says things like “shift to impactful professional learning focused on targeted outcomes” unironically. Their LinkedIn profile says “Shaping the Future of Learning: LINC supports the development of equitable, student-centered learning by helping educators successfully shift to blended, project-based, and other innovative learning models.” You get the idea.

LINC was co-founded by Tiffany Wycoff, who logged a couple of decades in the private school world before writing a book, launching a speaking career, and co-founding LINC in 2017. Co-founder Jaime Pales used to work for Redbird Advanced Learning as executive director for Puerto Rico and Latin America and before that “developed next-generation learning programs” at some company. 

LINC has offices in Florida and Colombia. 

YourWai promises to do lots of things so that teachers can get “90% of your work done in 10% of the time.” Sure. Ross told her audience that teachers just enter students’ needs and the standards they want to hit and the app will spit out a lesson plan. It’s a “game changer” that will give teachers more time to “think creatively.” 

These stories are going to crop up over and over again, and every story ought to include this quote from Cory Doctorow:

We’re nowhere near the point where an AI can do your job, but we’re well past the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.

Look, if you ask AI to write a lesson plan for instructing students about major themes in Hamlet, the AI is not going to read Hamlet, analyze the themes, consider how best to guide students through those themes, and design an assessment that will faithfully measure those outcomes. What it’s going to do is look at a bunch of Hamlet lesson plans that it found on line (some of which may have been written by humans, some of which may have been cranked out by some amateur writing for online corner-cutting site, and some of which will have been created by other AI) and mush them all together. Oh, and throw in shit that it just made up. 

There are undoubtedly lessons for which AI can be useful–cut and dried stuff like times tables and preposition use. But do not imagine that the AI has any idea at all of what it is doing, nor that it has any particular ability to discern junk from quality in the stuff it sweeps up on line. Certainly the AI has zero knowledge of pedagogy or instructional techniques.

But this “solution” will appeal because it’s way cheaper than, say, hiring enough teachers so that individual courseloads are not so heavy that paperwork and planning take a gazillion hours. 

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Fake, Real Education, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

Indiana: New Law Requires Professors to Teach “Diverse” Views or Face Firing

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2024 //
31

Republicans have grown frustrated by their inability to get their views represented on college campuses, so they have grown more assertive in passing laws to ban ideas they don’t like (such as “critical race theory” or gender studies or diversity/equity/inclusion or “divisive concepts).

Indiana is imposing a different approach. Instead of banning what it does not like, the Legislature is requiring professors to teach different points of view.

The New York Times reports:

A new law in Indiana requires professors in public universities to foster a culture of “intellectual diversity” or face disciplinary actions, including termination for even those with tenure, the latest in an effort by Republicans to assert more control over what is taught in classrooms.

The law connects the job status of faculty members, regardless of whether they are tenured, to whether, in the eyes of a university’s board of trustees, they promote “free inquiry” and “free expression.” State Senator Spencer Deery, who sponsored the bill, made clear in a statement that this would entail the inclusion of more conservative viewpoints on campus.

The backlash to the legislation, which Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, signed March 13, has been substantial. Hundreds wrote letters or testified at hearings, and faculty senates atmultiple institutions had urged the legislature to reject the bill, condemning it as government overreach and a blow to academic free speech.

“The whole point of tenure is to protect academic freedom,” said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, who described the law as “thought policing.”

Under the Indiana law, which goes into effect in July, university trustees may not grant tenure or a promotion to faculty members who are deemed “unlikely” to promote “intellectual diversity” or to expose students to works from a range of political views. Trustees also may withhold tenure or promotion from those who are found “likely” to bring unrelated political views into the courses they are teaching.

Faculty members who already have tenure would be subject to regular reviews to determine if they are meeting all of these criteria, and if the board concludes they are not, they could be demoted or fired. The law also requires colleges to set up a procedure for students or other employees to file complaints about faculty members considered to be falling short on these requirements.

Boards are not, under the law, allowed to penalize faculty for criticizing the institution or engaging in political activity outside of their teaching duties. The restrictions do not apply to private university faculty members.

Will professors of science be allowed to teach about climate change or evolution without giving equal time to “the other side?”

Will professors of American history be allowed to teach about the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow and institutional racism without introducing the Confederate point of view?

This law is a serious attack on academic freedom.

Categories Academic Freedom, Curriculum, Ethics, Higher Education, Indiana

Arizona: Grand Canyon Institute On Voucher Ripoff

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2024 //
3

The Grand Canyon Institute is a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization in Arizona. Its latest report concludes that charter schools are more accountable than vouchers. Vouchers suck up nearly $1 billion a year in public money and are completely unaccountable. Oucher schools are subject to no financial audits, do not have to comply with the state curriculum, and are not audited for academic performance.

Step right up and get your free money, grifters! Courtesy of Arizona taxpayers and GOP legislators!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Charters are Accountable, Independent Private Schools are Not Yet nearly a billion public dollars flow to unaccountable private schools

Phoenix —On Monday, the State Board for Charter Schools, a public body, voted unanimously to issue a notice of intent to revoke the charter contract for ARCHES Academy, currently located in Apache Junction.


The school appears to have both academic and financial problems and recently addressed an issue with a fire marshal. This action represents the kind of responsible oversight of charter schools that serves to protect the interests of students, parents and taxpayers.


In sharp contrast, independent private schools are required to have no such oversight, even though they currently receive nearly $1 billion in state public funding. That nearly matches the state general fund support for the state university system. Public funds that support private schools come from redirected general fund dollars through tax credit donations to Student Tuition Organizations and by funds from Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA)/vouchers directly from the General Fund. Last year GCI estimates private school tax credits cost $285 million (the formal report is due by March 31) and ESA/vouchers cost $592 million, so, collectively, nearly $900 million in public support for unaccountable private schools (note: this figure includes an amount for ESA homeschooling). 

The table below uses the case of ARCHES Academy to  contrast charter schools (which are privately owned public schools) with private schools that operate independently with the level of oversight and accountability required.

Please open the link to see the table comparing Arches charter school and private schools receiving vouchers.

For more information, contact:

Dave Wells, Ph.D., Research Director

602.595.1025, Ext. 2, dwells@azgci.org

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Curriculum, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Vouchers

California: Orange County Recalls 2 Rightwing School Board Members

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2024 //
4

Voters in Orange County, California, ousted two culture warriors, making clear their dissatisfaction with the attacks on curriculum, books, teachers, and students.

Howard Blume reports in The Los Angeles Times:

Voters in the city of Orange appear to have ousted two conservative school board members who had spearheaded policies widely opposed by advocates for LGBTQ+ youth in a recall election viewed as a local bellwether for the culture wars in education.


The fiercely contested recall election in the Orange Unified School District intensified with the board majority’s approval in the fall of a parent-notification policy requiring educators to inform parents when a student requests “to be identified as a gender other than that student’s biological sex or the gender listed on the birth certificate or any other official records.”


A legal battle over the issue is playing out as California Atty. General Rob Bonta pursues a court challenge of such policies enacted by a handful of conservative-leaning school boards. His lawsuit asserts that the rules put transgender and gender-nonconforming students in “danger of imminent, irreparable harm” by potentially forcibly “outing” them at home before they’re ready…

The recall came to be an early litmus test on the resonance with voters of issues that have roiled school boards throughout the nation: the teaching of racism and Black history, the rights of LGBTQ+ youth versus the rights of their parents, restrictions on LGBTQ+ symbols and related curriculum, and the removal of library books with sexual content — especially LGBTQ+ content — from school libraries.

Categories California, Censorship, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Gender

Ohio: Legislature Wants a Course in Capitalism, Not Financial Literacy

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2024 //
42

State legislatures these days tthjnkbthat they should pass laws telling teachers how to teach reading and what to teach in social studies. The latest example comes from Ohio, where the far-right legislature is in the midst of mandating a course on capitalism.

Denis Smith, retired educator, writes:

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, our republic is on fire. And that’s not being hyperbolic.

Incendiary language is now the norm in Congress and across the nation, further fanning the flames of overheated rhetoric in an election year. Indictments pile up against a former president, along with criminal trials looming in multiple jurisdictions. Perhaps even more ominous, jurors, judges, and election workers are being threatened with harm by extremists across our land.

But that’s only the short version of a narrative about a country at the brink, where democracy is threatened by the specter of authoritarianism.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, the legislature has examined the state of the state and determined that in today’s volatile world, there is a pressing need to modify public school curriculum by teaching … capitalism.

That’s right. Ohio Republicans have decided that teaching about capitalism is more important in troubled times than strengthening student learning opportunities about democracy. Yes, learning about capitalism is more important for Ohio students than the critical need for media literacy and increased research and critical thinking skills in an age of artificial intelligence and fake news.

Add to that the importance of teaching about character and caring about others, a key cornerstone of character education. 

To Republicans, whose former House Speaker and former state party chair are now serving prison sentences, along with their twice-impeached presidential front runner facing 91 felony criminal counts, there appears to be no pressing need for young people to learn more about personal ethics, citizenship, and the importance of character. 

But we probably should know that when it comes to Republicans, caring about the needs of others might be tantamount to socialism.

After the passage of Ohio Senate Bill 17 by a margin of 64-26 on Feb. 7, a measure which calls for the addition of teaching about capitalism in high school financial literacy standards, one Democratic legislator told the Cincinnati Enquirer/USA Today Network that adding capitalism to carefully crafted financial literacy classes only dilutes the amount of content students can learn in this important course of study designed to prepare students for assuming adult roles and functions. 

‘This bill is one part partisan message, one part ideological warfare and one part a poor fix’ to Ohio’s financial literacy class requirement, said Rep. Joe Miller, D-Lorain, a former social studies teacher who instructed students on the principles of capitalism.

The educator and legislator, now serving his third term in the Ohio House, is quite savvy in knowing the usual lockstep behavior of Republicans, none of whom voted against the bill. An additional observation by Miller might have also been influenced by knowing the tired rhetoric of one of the bill’s co-sponsors in the Ohio Senate, Andrew Brenner, who famously said in 2014 that public education was “socialism” and should be privatized. 

The Enquirer piece continued, saying Miller worried opponents of the bill would be labeled socialists in future campaigns.

With Brenner and Senate President Matt (“we can kind of do what we want”) Huffman, it’s only a matter of time before they use the words socialism and socialist, along with other Republicans, as tired descriptors for the noun Democrat. 

Come to think of it, if the titular head of the Republican Party is constantly complaining about witch hunts, what if we soon find out that the latest supply chain issue generated by the GOP might result in a shortage of witches?  If they do run out of witches, look for socialist hunts in this election year.

Categories Citizenship, Civics, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Extremism, Ohio

A Video Link to the Conversation about Privatization

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2024 //
40

Several readers told me they were unable to access my conversation with Todd Scholl of the South Carolina Center for Educatot Wellness and Learning.

We talked about attacks on public schools, standardized testing, and privatization.

Todd sent these links:

The video can be found on the CEWL website at www.cewl.us. A direct link to the video can be found at https://youtu.be/Zm0Vi3S3RLM.

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Extremism, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, South Carolina, Vouchers

CNN: “Moms for Liberty” Is Encountering Stiff Resistance

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2024 //
69

When an education story is featured by a major media outlet like CNN, you can bet it’s captured mainstream attention.

Many educators have worried about the pernicious agenda of “Moms for Liberty,” which arrived on the scene in 2021 with a sizable war chest.

What is that agenda? Defaming public schools and their teachers. Accusing them of being “woke “ and indoctrinating students to accept left wing ideas about race and gender. Banning books they don’t like. Talking about “parental rights,” but only for straight white parents who share their values.

M4L got started in Florida, as do many wacky and bigoted rightwing campaigns, but it has been shamed recently by the sex scandal involving one of its co-founders, Brigitte Ziegler. The two other co-founders dropped her name from their website, but the stain persists.

CNN reports that this rightwing group is encountering stiff opposition from parents who don’t share their agenda and who don’t approve of book banning.

The story begins:

Viera, FloridaCNN —

In Florida, where the right-wing Moms for Liberty group was born in response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates, the first Brevard County School Board meeting of the new year considered whether two bestselling novels – “The Kite Runner” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” – should be banned from schools.

A lone Moms for Liberty supporter sat by herself at the January 23 meeting, where opponents of the book ban outnumbered her.

Nearly 20 speakers voiced opposition to removing the novels from school libraries. One compared the book-banning effort to Nazi Germany. Another accused Moms for Liberty of waging war on teachers. No one spoke in favor of the ban. About three hours into the meeting, the board voted quickly to keep the two books on the shelves of high schools.

RELATED ARTICLEOusted Florida GOP leader Christian Ziegler won’t be charged with sexual battery

“Why are we banning books?” asked Mindy McKenzie, a mom and nurse who is a member of Stop Moms for Liberty, which was formed to counter what it calls a far-right extremist group “pushing for book banning and destroying public education.”

“Why are we letting Moms for Liberty infiltrate our school system?”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Gender, Hypocrisy, Injustice, Libraries, Literacy, Literature, Media, Parent Groups, Privatization, Racism

Daily Yonder: Public Colleges in Rural Areas Are Cutting the Humanities

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2024 //
39

I believe that a liberal arts education is the heart and soul of what it means to be an educated person. No matter what job or career or profession you aim for, you are not educated unless you have studied history, literature, the arts and sciences. These are the studies that prepare you for citizenship and for a full life. Can you understand the world if you know little about history? Can you understand political debates about medicine and health if you never studied science? Are you prepared to understand the breadth and depth of the human spirit if you have never learned about art and music?

I think not. Oddly, it seems to me, cutting the humanities is an elitist path, a decision that students in rural areas don’t need or deserve a full education that tends to their mind, their heart, and their soul.

Sadly, The Daily Yonder reports, public colleges and universities in rural areas are slashing courses and majors in the humanities, favoring instead the courses that prepare students for jobs and careers.

Part of the decision is based on declining enrollments, but the state budget for piublic higher education is being cut even wen the stat’s coffers are overflowing. Governors prefer to cut taxes—income taxes or property taxes—rather than invest in the future of their state.

Elaine C. Povich of Stateline reports:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Taya Sullivan, 20, is a freshman at West Virginia University, double majoring in neuroscience and Spanish. She also has a campus job in a linguistics lab, building on her majors and earning money she needs to continue her studies.

Next semester, both her Spanish major and her job will be gone.

Sullivan has been caught up in the university’s decision to eliminate its foreign language majors. The school is axing 28 majors altogether, ranging from undergraduate languages such as French and Russian to graduate majors in math and higher education. It also is cutting 12% of its professors.

Administrators say they’re responding to a budget shortfall, declining enrollment, flagging student interest in humanities courses, and pressure from parents who want their kids to be prepared for good-paying jobs after graduation.

“Are we going to revert back to ‘normal?’ No, we will have a new normal,” said West Virginia University President Gordon Gee in an interview with Stateline. “We are going to be much more oriented toward listening to the people who pay our bills — parents, students, legislators and others. And they very much want to see universities, particularly land grant institutions like ours, become engines of creativity and economic development.”

Many lesser-known public colleges nationwide have begun cutting back on the humanities, but West Virginia University is the “tip of the spear” for flagship state universities, Gee said.

Similar reductions are only expected to grow across the country, particularly in rural areas where campus budgets are lower, enrollments are more likely to be falling, and where the pressure for career-oriented majors may be greater. But critics argue that such changes in emphasis will sap states of intellectual firepower, leaving them with fewer leaders and citizens who are well-rounded.

In West Virginia, the cuts have prompted student demonstrations, a faculty resolution and objections from some lawmakers. Gee is unmoved.

“The budget [deficit] was only an accelerant; it’s change or die,” he said. “We are the first to jump off the cliff. I could make a living from calls from other university presidents to ask, ‘How are you doing it?’ We are having to change. We can no longer be everything to everyone. We’ve got to make choices.”

Other state universities, especially rural ones, are making similar choices. Missouri Western State University has eliminated dozens of majors and minors including English, history, philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, art, Spanish and French. Eastern Kentucky University shut theater programs and economics. The State University of New York at Potsdam is also cutting degree programs, including in art history, dance, French, Spanish and theater.

More cuts could be coming. The Board of Regents for the University of Kansas system announced in June it is reviewing proposals to eliminate programs at the six state universities. The review is meant “to ensure that programs meet student demand, improve student affordability, support Kansas communities and help meet the state’s workforce needs.” A decision is expected in 2024 on which programs to cut or consolidate, said Matt Keith, spokesperson for the Kansas Board of Regents.

Humanities courses such as languages, history, arts and literature are particularly vulnerable nationwide. Schools are more inclined to emphasize business, science, math and technology studies, which could lead to more high-paying jobs.

Students also appear to be turning away from the humanities: Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics shows that the percentage of bachelor’s degrees conferred by four-year institutions in the humanities dropped from 16.8% of all degrees in the 2010-11 school year to 12.8% in 2020-2021.

State budget reductions and schools’ funding shortfalls also have contributed to cuts, particularly in rural states. State spending on higher education fell in 16 of the 20 most rural states between 2008 and 2018, when adjusted for inflation, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and policy institute that advocates for left-leaning tax policies.

Higher education funding per student declined by more than 30% in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania during that period. In Kansas, it went down by nearly 23%.

State budget problems accounted for some of the reductions, but in other cases lawmakers preferred to spend available dollars on roads or K-12 education.

Even when state budgets were flush following a huge outlay of federal funds during the Covid-19 pandemic, many states, including West Virginia, opted for tax cuts rather than investments in higher education. In March, West Virginia Republican Governor Jim Justice signed a law immediately reducing the income tax by an average of 21.25%…

WVU English professor Adam Komisaruk, who also directs graduate studies in the English department, says the larger question is what state universities want to be.

“Is our mission as a university simply to respond to market forces and popular prejudice, and to make educational decisions based on supply and demand? Or are we committed to providing a robust and diverse exposure to modes of thought that will allow our students to become knowledgeable, responsible, ethical engaged members of society?

“If we want to run a vocational training program, fine. But you can’t pretend you are a liberal arts full institution committed not only to our land grant mission to serve the people of the state but also committed to modern ideas of liberal education and broad-based knowledge. You can’t have it both ways.”

Rural students can be particularly affected by university cuts, said Andrew Koricich, executive director for the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges and an associate professor at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. As West Virginia is a mostly rural state, a higher proportion of its students come from rural areas.

“A lot of states are shifting more toward looking at higher education not just as a public good but as a cost-benefit calculation. Then it becomes a value judgment whether rural students deserve the same education as urban institutions and students,” Koricich said.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Creativity, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Funding, Higher Education, Rural Schools
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