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John Thompson: The Most Important Lesson That Students Need Today

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2023 //
21

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, write about what matters most to students today: learning to pay attention in a world of screens and distractions.

He writes:

D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh, and Peter Schmidt begin their New York Times opinion piece, “Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can fight Back,” with an eloquent version of a statement that should have long been obvious:

We are witnessing the dark side of our new technological lives, whose extractive profit models amount to the systematic fracking of human beings: pumping vast quantities of high-pressure media content into our faces to force up a spume of the vaporous and intimate stuff called attention, which now trades on the open market. Increasingly powerful systems seek to ensure that our attention is never truly ours.

Then Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt use equally insightful language to explain why “We Can Fight Back” against “the little satanic mills that live in our pockets.” They recall that “for two centuries, champions of liberal democracy have agreed that individual and collective freedom requires literacy.” Today we face widespread complaints that reading is being undermined by “perpetual distraction,” due to commercial use of digital technologies. They add, “What democracy most needs now is an attentive citizenry — human beings capable of looking up from their screens, together.”

“Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can Fight Back” calls for a “revolution [which] starts in our classrooms.” They explain, “We must flip the script on teachers’ perennial complaint. Instead of fretting that students’ flagging attention doesn’t serve education, we must make attention itself the thing being taught.” They draw upon the work of “informal coalitions of educators, activists and artists who are conducting grass-roots experiments to try to make that possible. Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt call it “attention activism.

Due to these worldwide efforts, “common ground is rediscovered in the weave of collective attention.” They seek ways “to create, beyond the confines of our personalized digital universes, something resembling a shared world.” One set of starting places, museums, public libraries, universities, as well as classrooms, remind me of a time when I was a student, and the first half of my teaching career, when field trips were widely celebrated, and before critical thinking was subordinated to test prep.

“Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can fight Back” recommends another practice that I’ve long struggled with, “observations of absolutely whatever unfolds in the world,” in order pay “particular attention to the supposedly mundane … events that might under normal circumstances have gone unnoted.” It reminded me of a conversation with a student where we agreed that we don’t want to depend on beer or marijuana in order to fully appreciate a sunset. It was hard for me to later realize that I also took that shortcut in order to slow down and fully appreciate such beauty.

Next, I left my computer, and my dog and I got into our complicated new hybrid car to take a short ride to the park for a walk. Of course, the irony of driving to the walk is obvious. Then I figured out how to push the buttons for defrosting the window, rather than scrape the ice off. But then, technology taught me a new skill for paying attention to “normal circumstances” that had “gone unnoted.” I became enthralled the bubbles that broke loose from the coat of ice as it melted and dripped down the windshield. (Perhaps due to that experience, the park’s beautiful fall colors were even more awesome.)

Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt also reminded me of conversations I had had as a young Baby Boomer with family members, neighbors and other mentors. So many adults coached me on developing “inner directedness,” not “outer-directedness,” and to not be “like the Red River, a mile wide and a foot deep.” I was taught that my real goal shouldn’t be higher grades, but “learning how to learn.” And I’ll never forget the elementary school principal who took us to the junior high to watch Edward R. Murrow interviewing John Maynard Keynes, about the real purpose of school – which was not getting a job. Our goal should be learning how to learn how to be creative after technology reduced the workweek into 15 hours.

Of course, that hopefulness seems laughable today, but it brings us back to Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt and their diagnosis of why today’s technology has become so destructive. They linked to ATTENTION LIBERATION MOVEMENTS(or ALMS) that resist the “powerful new financial, commercial, and technological system that is commodifying human attention as never before.” It promotes “RADICAL HUMAN ATTENTION” to nurture “unrivaled access to the goodness of life;” and second, “that present circumstances present new and imperiling obstacles to human attentional capacities.” For instance, these bottom-up efforts seek to educate young people how, “We operate in a world in which attention is increasingly bought and sold. Bought and sold by powerful interests, pursuing wealth — pursuing ‘eyeballs,’” on screens.

And, of course, the subsequent undermining of inner-directedness, social ties, and critical thinking paved the way to today’s rightwing assault on democracy.

Although I was never as eloquent as Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt, but I’ve unsuccessfully advocated for their type of approach for a quarter of a century. My first encounter with a cell phone occurred the day after a gang-related murder when my students affiliated with the “Crips” stared at a new student, a “Blood,” who was secretly typing into a gadget I’d never seen before, who was requesting armed backup. Given the way that cell phones, predictably, increased violence and, predictably, undermined classroom instruction, I lobbied for our school to commit to regulating phones and engaging in cross-generational conversations about digital literacy and ethics.

Although I personally communicated with my students about “using digital technology,” but “not being used by it,” our school system refused to touch these issues. Before long, watching students who were glued to their phones, it seemed obvious we were also facing a crisis of loneliness, made much, much worse by screen time.

My personal experience thus gives me reasons for both hope and pessimism. Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt build on the same human community strengths that were crucial for me, and embraced by students in our phone-free classroom. But I can’t ignore the three decades of refusals by the systems I’ve worked with to tackle the challenge.

Then again, on the same day that the New York Times commentary was published, National Public Radio reported that California “joins a growing movement to teach media literacy.” The next day, the Washington Post called on parents to support a ban on smartphones. So, maybe the time is right for the wisdom of Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt, who make the case for “what democracy most needs now is an attentive citizenry — human beings capable of looking up from their screens, together.”

Categories Education Reform, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

National Education Policy Center: Closing the Gap Between Research and Practice in the Teaching of Reading

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2023 //
20

The National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado posted a useful analysis of research in the field of reading and how it should inform practice.

Key Takeaway: Some research claims of the “science of reading” movement are overly simplistic, so policymakers should seek different approaches to legislating reading.

Find Documents:

Publication Announcement: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication-announcement/2022/09/science-of-reading
NEPC Publication: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading

Contact:

Alex Molnar: (480) 797-7261, nepc.molnar@gmail.com
Faith Boninger: (480) 390-6736, fboninger@gmail.com
Paul Thomas: (864) 294-3386, paul.thomas@furman.edu

Learn More:

NEPC Resources on Reading Instruction

BOULDER, CO (September 13, 2022) – How students learn to read and how reading is best taught are often the focus of media, public, and political criticism. In a new NEPC policy brief, The Science of Reading Movement: The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction, Paul Thomas of Furman University explores the controversial history of the reading reform movement.

Throughout the decades, a striking amount of attention has sporadically been focused on how teachers teach reading—typically with a specific concern for phonics instruction. This attention has then spread to standardized test scores (including international comparisons) and a changing list of hypothetical causes for disappointing test scores (including progressivism, whole language, and balanced literacy).

Disappointing reading achievement has been sometimes attributed to how reading is taught, sometimes to social influences on students (such as technology and media), and sometimes to both. Widespread and ongoing criticism over the last 80 years has targeted a wide array of culprits:

  • State and federal reading policy;
  • The quality of teacher education and teacher professional development;
  • Theories of learning to read and reading instruction;
  • The role of phonics and other reading skills in teaching reading; and
  • The persistent gaps among classroom practices, reading policy, and the nature or application of science and research.

These discussions have not been evidence-free. In fact, scholars and literacy educators have over this time conducted extensive research into these and other issues. But the research has only limited impact on policy and practice.

Specifically, in contrast to much of the public debate and policymaking, these researchers have found reading instruction and learning to be complex, complicating the design of effective policy and classroom practice. Overall, this robust research base supports policies and approaches that acknowledge a range of individual student needs and that argue against “one-size-fits-all” prescriptions. Among literacy educators and scholars, then, important reading debates continue but do so without any identified silver-bullet solutions.

The current public debate is different. Since 2018, the phrase “science of reading” has been popularized as loosely defined shorthand for the broad and complex research base characterizing how children learn to read and how best to teach reading. Simplifying the issue for the public and for political readers, and failing to acknowledge the full complement of research findings, prominent members of the education media have used the term when framing the contemporary debate—often as pro-phonics versus no phonics. Various types of vendors have also found the shorthand term “science of reading” highly useful in branding and marketing specific phonics-oriented reading and literacy programs.

As the “science of reading” movement has grown, scholars have cautioned that advocates and commercial vendors often exaggerate and oversimplify both the problems and solutions around reading achievement and instruction. Yet these advocates have been extremely effective in lobbying for revised and new phonics-heavy reading legislation across most states in the U.S., producing rigid and ultimately harmful policy and practices. Still, in pursuing reform to address identified challenges, the movement does provide an opportunity for policymakers to investigate different approaches to reading instruction and to develop more nuanced policy.

Accordingly, Professor Thomas provides recommendations for state and local policymakers to provide teachers the flexibility and support necessary to adapt their teaching strategies to specific students’ needs.

Find The Science of Reading Movement: The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction, by Paul Thomas, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading

Categories Education Reform, Literacy, Research, Teachers and Teaching

Pennsylvania: New School Board President Sworn in on a Stack of Banned Books!

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2023 //
9

On Twitter (“X”), The Recount reports that the newly elected president of the Central Bucks County school board, Karen Smith, was sworn into office on a stack of banned books, not the Bible.

https://x.com/therecount/status/1732425364675203121?s=42&t=9ko2QEoKmRIlvHb1PdtjSw

The new board swept out a board of rightwing zealots.

Categories Censorship, Education Reform, Elections, Freedom to Read, Literacy, Literature, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania: New School Board Tosses Out Rightwing Policies

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2023 //
6

In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, voters elected a new school board pledged to reverse the policies of their Moms-for-Liberty style predecessors. That meant ending censorship of library books and ending the ban on gay-friendly displays, among other things. The old school board gave the retiring superintendent a $700,000 going-away gift; the new one is trying to recover the gift.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

The new Democrat-controlled Central Bucks school board moved quickly Monday to roll back some of its GOP-led predecessors’ most controversial actions — from suspending policies restricting library books to authorizing potential legal action into the former superintendent’s $700,000 payout.

What shape the new board’s actions will ultimately take isn’t yet clear. The board’s new solicitor, for instance, said earlier Monday that he needed to learn more about the separation agreement reached between the prior board and now-resigned superintendent Abram Lucabaugh before pursuing a lawsuit.

But the crowd that lined up outside the Central Bucks administrative building to witness the swearing-in of new members Monday was ready to celebrate regardless — cheering new leadership after what numerous speakers described as two years of “chaos,” bookended by highly contentious, big-money elections.

Republicans who cemented their majority in 2021 enacted bans on teacher “advocacy” in classrooms — including the display of Pride flags — and “sexualized content” in library books, and faced a federal complaint alleging the district had discriminated against LGBTQ students.

But Democrats swept the Nov. 7 school board elections — as they did in a number of area districts where culture-war issues had dominated debate.

“Two years ago, I stood in this room a broken woman,” said Silvi Haldepur, a district parent. But “this community banded together and stood up against the hate.”

Keith Willard, a social studies teacher, told the board it was “incredibly difficult” to work for the district when the previous board had “actively marginalized people” and pushed the “belief that staff are indoctrinating kids.”

“What I ask of this board is that you help steer the ship… and return the stewardship to the people that do the real work every day” — teachers and staff, said Willard, who drew a standing ovation.

The room again broke into applause as the board voted to suspend the library and advocacy policies,as well as a policy banning transgender students from participating in sports aligned with their gender identities — a measure the former board passed at its final meeting in the wake of last month’s elections.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Censorship, Curriculum, Democrats, Education Reform, Elections, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Gender, Pennsylvania

Should Domestic Violence Abusers Have the Right to Buy Guns?

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2023 //
19

Has the U.S. Supreme Court stripped away all limits on the right to buy and carry arms? We are soon to find out, as the Court just heard a case challenging restrictions on domestic violence abusers. A federal appeals court decided that even violent people should have the right to bear arms, because that is what the Founders wanted. Some states allow open carry of weapons; some require no background checks for purchasers. We may soon be living in the “O.K. Corral,” where shootouts are a common occurrence.

Rachel Barkow of the website CAFE analyzes the case and the likely ruling of the High Court. Barkow is a professor at the New York University School of Law, specializing in criminal law.

She writes:

Since 2008, there has been no greater obstacle to confronting America’s epidemic of gun violence than the Supreme Court. That was the year five justices on the Court decided the Heller case, which held, for the first time in the country’s history, that the Second Amendment of the Constitution protected an individual’s right to bear arms and was not, in spite of its plain language, cabined to protecting the collective right of a militia to bear arms. The Court’s majority claimed its view was consistent with the original meaning of the clause, but legal historians have demolished that claim. The Court’s decision was instead the product of an orchestrated campaign by the National Rifle Association over decades to shift opinion on the Constitution’s meaning. Heller was the culmination of those efforts and the decision drastically curtailed the ability of voters to limit gun possession because it entrenched a constitutional right to possess firearms. The actual holding of Heller covered only the ability to possess a gun inside one’s home for self-defense, but it was just the first step in the Court’s takeover of gun policy.

Despite widespread criticism by legal scholars and historians of the Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, the Court (pardon the pun) stuck to its guns. Last Term in Bruen, the Court expanded the scope of the Second Amendment by striking down a New York law that required people to show “proper cause” to get a permit to carry guns for self-defense in public. That decision not only expanded the right to bear arms to include carrying a weapon in public, but it also changed the manner in which the Court would analyze Second Amendment claims to make it even harder for sensible gun regulations to survive the Court’s review.

The Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Thomas, rejected the argument that a regulation that covers guns outside the home can be upheld if it promotes an important interest. Instead, “The government must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.”

In other words, no matter how much the government might want to address the scourge of gun violence and mass shootings, its hands are tied by what the Court believes white men in the 18th century would have wanted. Moreover, this is an inquiry that the Court typically gets wrong because it is not a body composed of trained historians, but of lawyers doing back-of-the-envelope history (derisively and accurately referred to as “law office history”) that typically just so happens to yield the very result a majority of justices would like to see.

That is how we have arrived at the surreal moment at the Court on Tuesday in which the justices heard arguments about whether the government can remove guns from domestic violence abusers. That is the issue in United States v. Rahimi, a case out of the Fifth Circuit, a conservative federal intermediate appellate court that covers Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The Fifth Circuit believed it correctly followed the framework from Bruen and struck down a federal law that prevents people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. To obtain such a restraining order, a court must find, after notice and a hearing, that a person presents a credible threat to their intimate partner or child, and that the order is necessary to protect the partner or child from “domestic gun abuse.”

In a sane world, the question of whether someone should lose access to weapons would turn on the adequacy of the procedures for making that determination and the evidence that the person poses a threat. In the Supreme Court’s world, in contrast, whether someone is stripped of access to guns depends solely on whether the government of the 18th century disarmed similarly situated people. According to the Fifth Circuit, the government’s evidence from the 18th century about taking guns from “dangerous” people was not sufficiently similar, so the federal law could not pass muster.

Will five justices of the Supreme Court agree with the Fifth Circuit that the historical record is too thin to support the domestic violence law? The Court’s three liberal justices will almost certainly side with the government. Justices Kagan and Sotomayor have already expressed their disagreement with the Court’s flawed framework for deciding these issues by joining Justice Breyer’s dissent in Bruen. Justice Jackson was not on the Court in Bruen, but she expressed skepticism about the Bruen framework in her questioning at oral argument in Rahimi. She got to the heart of the insanity of the matter when she asked Rahimi’s lawyer if the Court’s task, in his view, was to look for “the regulation of white Protestant men related to domestic violence,” or if it was possible to take the level of generality up a notch.

The question is whether at least two of the six conservative justices will agree, and all signs from the oral argument are that the government has amassed enough evidence to get five votes to uphold this particular law. Justice Barrett wrote an opinion when she was on the Seventh Circuit that recognized firearms can be removed from dangerous people, and her questions at argument suggested she sees Rahimi as falling into that category. Indeed, she talked about domestic violence as being in the heartland of danger. Justice Gorsuch also gave indications that the facts of this case would survive Second Amendment scrutiny because he kept carving out issues for future cases. It is likely other justices will join this decision as well, given the clear finding of danger under the facts of the case. Even Rahimi’s counsel had a hard time arguing his client was not a danger when asked at oral argument.

It is less clear that there are enough votes to shift the framework for deciding these cases so that the government in 2023 and beyond is not hamstrung by what the government did in the 18th century. Part of the debate at oral argument was over how specific a historical analog has to be to allow a gun regulation today. If the Court does not make clear that governments today can identify threats and dangers – even if the Framing generation did not identify those same threats and dangers – as suitable for disarmament, the government in Rahimi will have won a battle, but not the war, on gun violence. Whether gun regulations survive will depend on what five lawyers on the Supreme Court think.

The Court’s track record in Second Amendment cases does not inspire confidence. The Court got the history of the Second Amendment’s scope wrong in Heller. It is not an individual right but a collective one in the service of militias. The Court then made matters far worse in Bruen by broadening the scope of that right and preventing the government from regulating firearms unless the Framers passed a similar regulation. Everything comes down to an interpretation of 18th century America’s approach to guns, despite the fact that almost nothing about firearms is the same as it was at the time of the framing.

Nor does the Court limit itself to history so rigidly in other contexts. That is what led legal scholar Khiara Bridges to declare “the right to bear arms the most protected of rights in the Constitution.”

The Court’s inconsistent approach to originalism is the reason people can more easily lose their liberty than their right to keep a firearm. Although we are supposed to have a presumption of innocence in America and that is a concept firmly rooted in the original meaning of due process, if you are merely charged with a crime – not convicted – you can be locked in jail, according to the Supreme Court, as long as a judge thinks you are dangerous. No originalist should permit this, as the Framing generation did not condone incarceration on the basis that someone was merely accused of a crime and then deemed dangerous by a judge before conviction. Yet we have hundreds of thousands of people incarcerated on just this basis because the Court has not taken the same strict originalist approach to pretrial detention. We can only ponder why we ended up with a regime that would allow liberty to be taken away so cavalierly, but that treats gun rights as inviolate without a sufficiently precise historical analog.

The Framers were not so foolish as to place greater protections on guns than freedom. But the Supreme Court does not seem to understand the relevant history. Whatever the Court decides in Rahimi, we are a long way from a sensible constitutional framework for thinking about these issues as long as the inquiry will depend on the Court’s faulty historical analysis. Tragically, this is an area where the Court’s law office history is literally killing us.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Extremism, Guns, Safety

John Thompson: The Carnegie Unit in the Line of Fire

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2023 //
14

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, noticed that the Carnegie Unit is under fire. Do you know what a Carnegie Unit is? It’s a measure of time spent learning a subject. Here’s the definition on the website of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching:

The unit was developed in 1906 as a measure of the amount of time a student has studied a subject. For example, a total of 120 hours in one subject—meeting 4 or 5 times a week for 40 to 60 minutes, for 36 to 40 weeks each year—earns the student one “unit” of high school credit. Fourteen units were deemed to constitute the minimum amount of preparation that could be interpreted as “four years of academic or high school preparation.”

Why is this controversial?

John Thompson explains:

I was stunned when reading the opening paragraph of Mike Petrilli’s “Replacing Carnegie Unit Will Spark Battle Royale.” Petrilli is the president of the corporate reform-funded Thomas B. Fordham Institute, with a history of fervent support for Common Core. But now, Petrilli warns of the ways that the Carnegie Foundation’s and Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ Institute’s competency-based model could open a “Pandora’s Box.” He writes:

The scant coverage of this initiative—and the limited number of players involved—implies that many see this as just a technocratic reform, one that merely seeks to replace “credit hours” with mastery-based approaches to learning. Don’t be mistaken: If it gets traction, this move is likely to spark a battle royale that will make the Common Core wars look like child’s play.

While recognizing the Carnegie Unit – where graduation standards are driven by time in class and credits earned – is flawed, Petrilli correctly argues “we can’t just focus on ‘disrupting’ the current system.”  Moreover, he says the heart of this disruptive model would be “a lot more high-stakes testing.”

Petrilli notes that a rapid, digital transformation of schooling “has huge potential upsides for high-achieving students.”  Even though Petrilli was one of the true believers in college-readiness who pushed Common Core without, I believe, adequately thinking ahead, he now asks whether they should set the graduation bar “at the ‘college-ready’ level” if that “means denying a diploma to millions of young people who are nowhere near that bar today and not likely to clear it tomorrow?” For instance:

How do we deal with the enormous variation in student readiness upon arrival in high school? Will the new system allow students prepared to tackle advanced material to do so, even if it means further stratification along line(s) of achievement, race, and/or class?

In 2019, Chalkbeat reported on the slow growth and mixed successes and setbacks of Jobs’ innovation schools. Back then, Matt Barnum wrote, “what kinds of change, exactly, XQ wants people to get behind remains unclear to some.” And he quoted Larry Cuban on the number of schools that abandoned the effort, “To have that kind of mortality rate at the end of three years — that would strike me as high given that huge amount of money.”

And, I’d certainly worry about transformative changes, such as those pioneered in Rhode Island, that are “driven” by XQ’s Educational Opportunity Audit (EOA). Given the failure of data-driven reformers’ efforts to create reliable and valid metrics for measuring classroom learning “outputs,” it’s hard to imagine how they could evaluate the learning produced by the large (perhaps limitless?) number of their untested approaches.

I followed the few links to Tulsa’s experiment, under Deborah Gist, to “re-imagine” high schools.” In 2019, the district received $3.5 million for three schools for “Tulsa Beyond,” using a “nationwide high school redesign model,” which was “funded through Bloomberg Philanthropies and XQ Super Schools.”  It would be hard to evaluate any reforms’ outcomes during the Covid years and today’s rightwing attacks. But, then again, those reforms were based on the claim that data-driven accountability can do more measurable good than harm.

Only two of the three Tulsa schools have published state “grades” before and after their experiment.  Daniel Webster H.S received a “D” in both 2017-2018, and a “D” in 2021-2022. Nathan Hale H.S received an “F” in both years. Again, I don’t have data to make a serious evaluation of the Tulsa reforms, but it is the corporate reformers who have promised a method of evaluating them. And they should carry the burden of proof, as opposed to dumping the costs of failed gambles on students.

Petrilli’s article, and the sources he cited, convinced me that the push to replace the current system without learning the lessons of edu-political history and adequately planning for a post-Carnegie Unit era is extremely worrisome. I checked with another corporate reformer who I have opposed, but also respect, about the lessons of history that mastery-learning advocates should consider. He said, “Nothing ever gets learned.” Given the failed track record of the disruptive change, as well as Petrilli’s advocacy for it, we need to pay attention when he goes on record saying that the under-reported story of “‘multiple pathways’—via multiple diplomas” could create “multiple pitfalls.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Deregulation, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Massachusetts, Top State on NAEP, Discovers a “Serious Literacy Crisis” Among Youngest Children

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2023 //
28

This is the most bizarre story I have read in many a day. The Boston Globe reported on a study showing a “serious literacy crisis” among the state’s youngest children. This is strange because Massachusetts regularly performs at the top of NAEP reading assessments.

The study was conducted by WestEd, a research group based in California. Apparently the researchers assessed the literacy skills of children in kindergarten, first and second grades. It is not surprising that most children in K and 1 and even 2 can’t read. They are only beginning to read.

The story starts:

A new state-commissioned study of young elementary students found that more than half showed early signs of reading difficulties — more evidence that the state has a serious literacy crisis, despite its reputation for educational excellence.

The report, released Friday, provides a first-of-its kind look at the reading skills of the state’s youngest children, whose reading prowess is not assessed by the state until the first MCAS exam in third grade.

The results are troubling: Nearly 30 percent of students in grades K-3 were at high risk of reading failure, and as many as 20 percent showed signs of having dyslexia, a language processing disorder that must be addressed with specialized reading instruction. Low-income students, those learning English or receiving special education services, Latino students, and Black students were most likely to experience reading struggles, according to researchers with WestEd, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that conducted the analysis.

The report suggests schools are not helping most struggling readers catch up: 60 percent of students who began the school year at risk of reading difficulties ended the school year in the same concerning position. But it found that younger students are much more likely to improve with extra help than older students are, a powerful argument for early intervention…

The extent of the state’s early literacy struggles have been laid bare annually in MCAS results, which, as the Globe’s Great Divide team previously reported, regularly show tens of thousands of students advancing from grade to grade without the reading skills they need to be successful.

The Globe investigation found nearly half of the state’s school districts last school year were using a reading curriculum the state considered “low quality.” A national nonprofit ranked Massachusetts this year in the bottom half of the nation in preparing educators to teach reading.

Massachusetts has not, as other states have, required evidence-based methods of reading instruction.

The “national nonprofit” that gave low scores to teacher education programs in the state is the National Council on Teacher Quality, a conservative group created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the George W. Bush administration. Its goal is to promote phonics. When NCTQ ranks Ed schools, it doesn’t visit them; it reads their catalogues.

If Massachusetts has a “serious literacy crisis,” the rest of the nation is a dumpster fire.

On NAEP, fourth grade students in Massachusetts typically score at or near the top in the nation. The percentage of students in Massachusetts who performed at or above NAEP Proficient in 2022 was 43%.

NAEP Proficient is equivalent to an A.

The only jurisdiction with higher scores in fourth grade was the Department of Defense schools. Five states had scores that were not significantly different from Massachusetts. Those six states outperformed 45 states and jurisdictions in fourth grade.

The point of the WestEd study seems to be that the state must push through a greater emphasis on phonics in teacher education programs, and that MCAS testing in grade 3 should start sooner.

The children who need extra help are low-income, limited-English, or in need of special services, etc. This is not news.

The “serious literacy crisis” looks and smells like a manufactured crisis. This report looks like a hit job on the state’s teachers and colleges of education. If the rest of the nation’s children matched the performance of those in Massachusetts, that would be cause for a national celebration.

Categories Childhood, Education Reform, Literacy, Massachusetts, NAEP, Standardized Testing

Politico: Most Vouchers Are Used by Students Who Never Attended Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2023 //
8

How many times have we heard the claim that “vouchers will save poor kids from failing public schools”? That claim is plainly false. As we have seen voucher programs scale up, it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of students who take vouchers never attended public schools.

Now, even Politico has noticed that the main beneficiaries of vouchers are rich kids. Maybe that was the goal all along. The headline of a piece Politico ran recently was: “GOP States Are Embracing Vouchers. Wealthy Parents Are Benefitting.”

In Arkansas, where vouchers were just initiated, 95% were claimed by students never in public school. Florida, with its long-established voucher program, recently made vouchers available to all, regardless of income. Only 13% of vouchers were claimed by public school students.

Those of us who follow education politics closely have known these facts for a long time. Veteran voucher researcher Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has broadcast this finding in TIME, in The Hechinger Report, in daily newspaper columns.

But when POLITICO notices that vouchers are subsidizing those who never attended public schools, it means that the news is spreading beyond the choir of voucher critics.

With enrollment surging in these programs — which Republicans say shows how desperate families are for more education choices — early data shows that students in some of these states aren’t leaving their public schools for private options. Instead, most scholarships are going to incoming kindergarteners and students already enrolled in private schools…

School choice expansions are fueled, in part, by groups like the American Federation for Children — founded by former Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — sending millions of dollars to candidates who support them. For the 2022 election cycle, the organization boasted donating $9 million to candidates backing school choice with reportedly solid success — winning 277 out of 368 races.

DeVos and the GOP are not known for their devotion to poor kids, unless you believe voucher propaganda.

More than half of the voucher funding in Arizona is going to students previously enrolled in private school, homeschooling or other non-public options, according to a memo circulated by the Hobbs administration. In 2022 in Arizona, 45 percent of scholarship applicants came from the wealthiest quarter of students in the state, according to an analysisfrom one think tank.

Vouchers divert funding from the public schools to pay the partial tuition of rich kids. We now know?

Was that the plan all along?

Categories Education Reform

Thom Hartmann: The GOP Plan to Kill Social Security

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
14

This may be the most important article you read today. The Republicans have made it a practice to promote culture-war issues in order to obscure their real goals: cutting or eliminating entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare. Because the entitlement programs are wildly popular, the GOP can’t admit publicly that they oppose them. So the GOP elevates issues that they oppose like “woke,” critical race theory, diversity-equity-inclusion, drag queens, and gay marriage. Forget the smokescreen and see what their real agenda is.

Thom Hartmann writes.

Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed Social Security through Congress, signing it into law on August 14th 1935, and Republicans opposed it then and have hated it ever since.

Next week, they’re planning to do something about it with a House hearing designed to set up a closed-door commission to “reform” the program. They figure when government funding runs out in January they’ll be able use the fiscal crisis they intend to create to force Democrats to go along with what the Biden administration calls a “Death Panel for Medicare and Social Security.”

There is an incredibly long history here.

Back in 1935 during the debate on Social Security, New York Republican Congressman James Wadsworth rose to warn America that the program to end poverty among the elderly was an effort by Roosevelt to establish a dictatorship in America. It would be, he said:

“[A] power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.”

Echoing Wadsworth, fellow New Yorker Republican Daniel Reed, imagining himself a modern-day Paul Revere, declared, “The lash of the dictator will [soon] be felt!”

The next year was a presidential election, and the 1936 Republican presidential candidate, Alf Landon, campaigned on ending Social Security’s “cruel hoax” and “fraud on the working man”; four years later, the GOP’s 1940 presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie, promised Americans that “you will never collect a dollar of your Social Security.”

It hasn’t quite worked out that way: Social Security has never missed a payment, never bounced a check, and pretty much ended the widespread deaths by poverty-associated hunger and freezing to death in the winter that were widespread among the elderly before its adoption.

Nonetheless, Republicans still hate the program. As do the fat-cat bankers who fund them and think those trillions in the Social Security Trust Fund should be in their money bins where they can skim a few billion a month off in administrative fees for themselves and the politicians they own.

Over the past two decades, Republicans in Congress have done everything they can to sour Americans on Social Security, mostly by repeatedly gutting funding for its administration every time they have control of the budget process.

The GOP’s plan has been to so overburden workers at the Social Security Administration that it takes absurd amounts of time and effort for people turning 65 to sign up, or for seniors on Social Security to find anybody to talk with about problems with or confusion about their claims.

In this, they’ve been spectacularly successful, forcing cut after cut into must-pass budget bills under the threat of government shutdowns.

As the economists at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) note:

“Congress has cut SSA’s core operating budget by 17 percent since 2010, after adjusting for inflation. These cuts hurt SSA’s service to the public in every state. The agency has been forced to shutter field offices and shrink its staff, leading to longer waits for service and growing backlogs. While the overall effect is a decline in service nationwide, the effects of the cuts vary considerably by state.

“SSA’s staff shrank by 15 percent nationwide between 2010 and 2021, so there are fewer people to take appointments, answer phones, and process applications for Social Security’s vital retirement, survivors, and disability benefits.

“As a result, workers and beneficiaries must wait longer to be served. Four states — Alaska, Iowa, Virginia, and West Virginia — and Puerto Rico have each lost more than 25 percent of their staff since 2010. …

“DDS (disability) staff shrank by 16 percent nationwide between 2010 and 2021. Eight states — Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia — each lost over 30 percent of their DDS staff.”

Congressional Republicans’ hope, of course, is to make the administration of Social Security so clunky that frustrated Americans will go along with turning the program over to the giant banks who own the Republican Party (and more than a few Democrats).

And now House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson is keeping his promise to his banking industry donors, making one of his first orders of business to push forward the further immiseration — and ultimate privatization — of Social Security.

He’s not the first.

When Ronald Reagan had a chance, he jumped at the opportunity to avoid political heat by passing the buck to a 1981 commission headed up by Libertarian/Republican Alan Greenspan (a former member of Ayn Rand’s cult, who brought a dollar-shaped floral wreath to her funeral).

To “save” Social Security and avoid lifting the cap on Social Security taxes (today set at $160,200: if you make more than that, you and every millionaire and billionaire in America don’t pay an additional penny to support Social Security), Reagan’s commission made benefits taxable for the first time, nearly doubled the Social Security part of the FICA tax rate working-class people paid, and raised the retirement/eligibility age from 65 to 67.

That, though, wasn’t nearly enough for Republicans who still consider Social Security “tyranny,” “socialism,” “fraud,” a “Ponzi scheme,” and a “hoax.”

— Senator Rick Scott, before being called out by President Biden, pushed a plan to require the very existence of the entire Social Security program to be reauthorized by Congress every 5 years or it would automatically expire.

— Senator Ron Johnson demanded it become part of annual budget negotiations that could be held hostage to the debt ceiling.

— Lindsey Graham called “entitlement reform” a “must” and the largest caucus in the GOP, the Republican Study Committee, published a proposal that would turn Social Security into a welfare program as an initial step toward full privatization.

— Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio has called for raising the retirement age even higher than Reagan’s 67, and Senator Mike Lee called for a total “phase out” of Social Security.

— Florida Republican Congressman Mike Waltz told Fox Business, “If we really want to talk about the debt and spending, it’s the entitlements programs.”

— Senators John Thune and Mitt Romney have floated similar proposals. The list could go on for pages, particularly if we go back through previous decades.

And it’s not just Republicans in Congress who have worked for years to destroy Social Security: so have GOP presidents.

In 2005, after winning reelection based on his 2003 “wartime president” scheme to lie America into attacking Iraq and Afghanistan, George W. Bush (who campaigned for Congress in 1978 on turning Social Security over to the big banks like the one his grandfather ran) began a tour of America touting full privatization of Social Security.

“I earned capital in this campaign,” he said, “political capital, and now I intend to spend it [on privatizing Social Security].”

In that, he was simply trying to fulfill his campaign promise that banks, instead of the government, should administer “private” Social Security accounts for seniors. As he said in his 2004 State of the Union address:

“Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account. We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people.”

Back in 2010, President Obama established a bipartisan commission by executive order to look at ways to reduce the national debt, but Republicans on the commission demanded it focus instead on cutting Social Security (which has nothing to do with the nation’s debt, as SS is self-funding).

Because of the GOP’s obsession with using the commission as an opportunity to try to cut the program, Democrats began calling it the “Catfood Commission”: the GOPs’ proposed cuts in benefits would force seniors to eat cheap cat food to survive. The commission died an ignominious death.

Now Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson wants to revive the Catfood Commission, only this time behind closed doors where the capitol police can keep out those pesky members of the press and the public.

Its first meeting will be tomorrow, headed up by Republican Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington. (The announcement is here.)

Social Security Works Executive Director Alex Lawson asked Representative Arrington if Republicans were planning to cut benefits to seniors with their proposed commission and, as Lawson noted in a viral Twitter video, Arrington:

“REFUSES to tax the ultra-wealthy to protect Social Security. Instead, he plans to create a death panel to cut Social Security behind closed doors.”

Republicans now think they have the wind at their backs in this effort, which banks have poured hundreds of millions of lobbying and campaign contribution dollars into over the years.

Fully 10,000 people become eligible for Social Security every day, and these new retirees are increasingly frustrated with the time delays at the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the difficulty even reaching a real person to speak with.

This, of course, is the intended outcome of more than a decade of GOP cuts to the program’s administrative staff.

As CPBB notes:

“SSA lost roughly 11,000 employees between 2010 and 2021 and expects to lose another 4,500 front-line employees this year. State DDSs lost roughly 2,500 employees between 2010 and 2021 and attrition over the past year is over 25 percent. Inevitably, understaffing means that beneficiaries must wait longer to be served.

“The average processing time for an initial disability claim had held fairly steady in recent years at three to four months, but has been rising and reached over six months in April 2022. One million applicants awaited a decision on their disability benefit applications as of April 1, 2022.”

Tomorrow’s hearing will be behind closed doors, and, if mainstream media’s historic reluctance to highlight the GOP’s hatred of Social Security is any indication, it’s unlikely it’ll even be covered by the press in any significant way.

But keep an eye on this and tell everyone you know about it. Social Security Works is leading the charge to notify the public, noting that over 100 national organizations have already spoken out against this latest Republican attack on the program.

Both the MAGA faction and the old-line “conservative” corporate shill members of the GOP are dead serious about killing off this vital and important part of FDR’s legacy: it’s going to take grassroots outrage to stop them.

Forget the culture wars: They are a distraction. A vote for a Republican is a vote to eliminate Social Security.

Categories Education Reform

The Network for Public Education Needs YOU!

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
7

The Network for Public Education is the largest organization of volunteers and a tiny staff working every day to stop privatization of our public schools. The following is a message from our executive director, Carol Burris. Unlike the billionaire-funded advocacy groups for charters and vouchers, we need you! Contributions of any size are welcome!

What keeps NPE going are donors like you–friends of public education who are willing to make a one-time or monthly donation to invest in the continuance of our public schools.

We operate on a shoestring. But our reports, action alerts, advocacy, conferences, and webinars with Diane put us at the forefront of saving public education. Behind the scenes in fighting vouchers in Texas or making the case for Charter School Programs reform, NPE is the organization with a tiny budget but a mighty voice.

So please give to NPE this holiday season. You can make an online donation here, or, if you prefer to send a check, our address is:

The Network for Public Education, PO BOX 227, New York City, NY 10156.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers
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