For a change, good news on the culture wars front arrives in Florida by way of successful activism, a less sycophantic Legislature — and a significant court settlement reached in a constitutional challenge to the state’s “Don’t Say Gay law.”
Students and teachers will be able to discuss LGBTQ+ issues in the classroom — as long as it’s not in the lesson plans. New, detailed guidelines from the state Department of Education about whatcan and can’t be said regarding sexual orientation and gender identity are supposed to be coming soon to school districts.
One can only hope these spelled-out rules focus on helping kids understand — and respect — all kinds of families that aren’t going away just because religious zealots desire it. And that they leave out the political hysterics of past years.
In other words, the rules need to be useful.
In addition to the court settlement, there were positive developments in the Legislature: Harmful censorship and rights bills infringing on free speech and a free press, and to ban abortion in the state, were left to die on the floor or in committees.
To save face and ego, the discriminatory “Don’t say gay” law’s chief instigator, Gov. Ron DeSantis, claimed the settlement as a victory over “activists and extremists.” As if we’re all blind to the fact that the activists at work spinning rage-provoking misinformation were, among right-wingers, the Moms for Liberty he heralded, a group now losing ground here and all over the country.
As for the state’s chief extremist, it’s DeSantis himself.
It bears repeating: Gender identity and sexual orientation was never part of the curriculum in kindergarten through third grade in Florida. As the legal challenge made clear, the overblown outrage created by falsehoods and exaggerations about “pornographic” books available to children was circulated by Republicans to set the stage to pass legislation.
They used the first ban on elementary school-aged kids as the conduit to extend anti-gay laws to prohibit the free speech of mature high school students. The courts saw that for what it was: an attempt to send back to the closet an entire community by silencing it.
Didn’t ‘stay the course’
Voters are tired of dogmatic hogwash hijacking educational institutions.
From the offensively watered-down teaching of Black history to the redefinition of subjects areas like civics — only patriotism allowed — plus, the more recent attempt to wipe out sociology the way diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs were, all these initiatives have brought negative, world-wide attention to Florida.
To add insult to the injury, the free-speech restrictions in public education are happening at a time when a voucher system allows parents to afford whatever private education they choose for their children. But it’s never enough. Republicans want to impose conservative ideology on the rest of us.
Some eager-beaver legislators heard him. But key players like Senate President Kathleen Passidomo of Naples and House Speaker Paul Renner of Palm Harbor didn’t follow his mandates this time like bobble-heads.
Perhaps they took their cues from Iowa caucus results: DeSantis pitched his “Make America Florida” — and got a no, thanks.
A new report ranks US states in terms of how well their legislatures are protecting public schools and the students who attend them. From expanding charters to launching illiberal attacks on kids and families, a worrying number of states failed the test.
State legislatures play an enormous role in making public school systems functional and safe. (SDI Productions / Getty Images)
On February 8, sixteen-year-old nonbinary sophomore Nex Benedict died of causes that have yet to be explained to the public. The day before, Nex had told a police officer they were beaten by three schoolmates in a bathroom at their Oklahoma high school. Sue Benedict, Nex’s grandmother and adoptive parent, told the Independent that Nex suffered from identity-based bullying, beginning shortly after Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt signed a lawforcing trans students to use bathrooms that match the sex listed on their birth certificates.
In addition to the bathroom ban, Stitt has signed severalotherlaws targeting trans youth. There are currently fifty-four other anti-LGBTQ bills before the Oklahoma legislature. While the exact cause of Nex’s death remains unverified, it’s clear that the violence preceding it occurred in an increasingly hostile environment for LGBTQ youth in the state of Oklahoma.
According to the American Medical Association and the National Institutes of Health, bathroom bans put vulnerable kids at risk for serious harm. And even when anti-LGBTQ laws don’t pass, researchindicates that young people are adversely affected by proposed legislation that puts their safety and humanity up for debate, fueling a climate of tension and suspicion which can exacerbate bullying behavior and mental health issues. Per 2019 data, majorities of LGBTQ kids have experienced harassment or bullying in school, leading to increased absences and potentially dire long-term consequences. But LGBTQ students in schools with LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and policies are more likely to feel safe and report that their peers accept them.
In other words, adults — from educators to social media personalities to lawmakers — set a tone that appears to be highly determinative of whether school is a place where kids like Nex can safely be themselves.
This pattern is hardly restricted to LGBTQ issues. State-level legislation shapes the societies in which kids live and schools operate. For this reason “Public Schooling in America,” the latest data-packed national report card from the Network for Public Education (NPE), focuses on the extent to which each state legislature protects young people, both in and out of public school systems.
While the previous two NPE report cards have focused primarily on school privatization, this one goes further, connecting the dots between seemingly distinct attacks on public schooling that are advancing as part of the push for Christian nationalism: charter and voucher expansion, publicly funded homeschooling, defunding of public schools, and illiberal restrictions on kids and educators.
Using a points system based on how statehouses treat the above topics, NPE awarded “A” grades to five states, both red and blue, that demonstrate a strong commitment to students and democratically governed public schools: 1) North Dakota, 2) Connecticut, 3) Vermont, 4) Illinois, and 5) Nebraska. Seventeen states — all but two of which are governed by a Republican trifecta— earned “F” grades. The poorest scoring of these “F” states will come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to school privatization or the anti-LGBTQ laws curtailing kids’ and educators’ rights: 47) Arkansas, 48) North Carolina, 49) Utah, 50) Arizona, and 51) Florida.
Ultimately the report underscores a critical point: while schools are directly tasked with prioritizing child well-being and student safety, they don’t perform these duties in a vacuum. State legislatures play an enormous role in making public school systems functional and safe — or, in many cases, severely undermining them.
Privatization: Vouchers and Charters
Vouchers, which subtract taxpayer dollars from public education and turn them over to privately operated schools and service providers (including for-profit and religious schools), have notched considerable statehouse wins in recent years. In 2023 alone, seven states launched new voucher plans, while others made existing programs available to wealthy families who have never sent their kids to public schools.
Significantly, while voucher programs’ costs to taxpayers have mushroomed since 2000, bathing state budgets in red ink, overall private school enrollment actually decreased from 11.38 percent in 1999 to 9.97 percent in 2021. That’s because vouchers aremostpopular among privileged parents whose kids were already attending private schools. These privatization schemes may be propping up academically impoverished religious schools, but they are not incentivizing an exodus from public education.
Vouchers take various forms, including traditional vouchers or tuition grants, tuition tax-credit scholarship programs (TTCs), and education savings accounts (ESAs), which turn large sums of public money over to parents with virtually no strings attached. With all vouchers, and ESAs in particular, there are few or no safeguards to prevent fraud or ensure that kids are actually learning core subjects.
Vouchers are a preferred tool of religious extremists seeking state-funded Christian education, but most state constitutions have clauses prohibiting public funding of religious institutions. ESAs and TTCs are designed to evade these restrictions by funding families rather than schools (ESAs), or allowing people to donate to private school scholarships instead of paying their taxes (TTCs). Generally speaking, voucher-funded private schooling is rife with discrimination that would be illegal in public school systems. A 2023 report by the Education Voters of Pennsylvania, for example, found that 100 percent of surveyed voucher schools have policies that overtly discriminate against kids based on LGBTQ identity, disability status, academic ability, religion, pregnancy or abortion history, or other factors.
Vouchers have made splashier headlines than charter schools of late, as Republicans abandon the decades-old bipartisan education reform truce. But Christian nationalists have also been using charter schools to press their agenda, with a significant increase in right-wing “faith-friendly,” “classical,” or “back-to-basics” charter schools (and at least one officially religious church-run charter school on track to open in Oklahoma). Another in-depth report from NPE documents this rise, noting that these charter schools, which market themselves to conservative white families, are nearly twice as likely to be run by for-profit corporations as the charter sector at large.
The growth of online charter schools, which have terrible academic track records, and charter schools run for a profit has continued apace. Thirty-five states allow for-profit corporations to manage nonprofit charter schools, and in six states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and West Virginia), for-profits manage over 30 percentof all charter schools. Fraud and mismanagement result in the frequent shuttering of publicly funded charter schools, sometimes leaving families in the lurch mid–school year. Since 2019, NPE has been collecting news stories of charter school malfeasance and abrupt closures (charter churn). Thirteen states have racked up at least fifty such reports: California takes the prize for one hundred and eighty charter scandal stories, and Pennsylvania comes in second.
Though often cleverly referred to as “public,” charter schools are not equally accessible by all kids. In School’s Choice, researchers Wagma Mommandi and Kevin Welner show how charter schools use branding and promotional strategies to sway enrollment toward students with more resources and fewer needs than the general population.
In an even more blatant example of the nonpublic nature of charter schools, NPE points to the phenomenon of workplace charters. Under Florida law, such schools are permitted to restrict enrollment to the children of a specific firm’s employees — functioning as a form of labor discipline reminiscent of the last century’s coal “company towns.” At the Villages Charter School (VCS)’s six campuses, parental employment is verified monthly. If a VCS parent hates working at the Villages (a large, highly profitable retirement community) and wants to quit, they had better be prepared to upend their kids’ educational and social lives.
Homeschooling
The number of homeschooling families spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued to rise. Journalists at the Washington Post found a 51 percent increase over the past six years in states where it’s possible to track homeschooling trends. Once a practice found mainly among fundamentalist Christians in rural areas, it is now the fastest growing education sector.
Thirteen states directly subsidize homeschooling through vouchers or tax credits. A flourishing tech-based industry (including charter schools for homeschooling families) has emerged to cash in on these state subsidies, with parents putting taxpayer dollars to questionable uses. In Arizona, a proliferation of news stories has documented homeschooling families spending ESA money on things like LEGO sets, snowboarding trips, ninja training, and aeroponic indoor gardens. Very few states have regulations in place to ensure that homeschooled children are receiving basic academic instruction. In fact, most states allow parents to issue a diploma with no verification of student learning.
Culture warriors like Chaya Raichik have used the slippery concept of “grooming” to gin up fears about adults hurting kids in public schools. In reality, because public schools are governed by strict child safety laws including background checks and mandated reporting, they are much more likely to detect and prevent abuse than minimally regulated private schools and totally unregulated homes. Eleven states don’t even require parents to report that they’re homeschooling their kids, while fourteen more just require a onetime notice with no follow-up. Only Pennsylvania and Arkansas conduct any form of background check on homeschooling parents.
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education has cataloged about one hundred and eighty horrific stories of homeschooled children suffering and even dying from neglect, abuse, and torture in their educational settings. Nicole and Jasmine Snyder, for example, experienced things like having their heads bashed against a wall, being forced to stand in a dark hallway for long stretches, and having urine and feces smeared on their faces as punishment for potty accidents. They starved to death in 2016 and 2017, weighing five and ten pounds respectively. Because they were homeschooled, no one outside the family had any idea the abuse was happening. Their murders were not revealed until 2021.
Public School Financing
Researchers have clearly established the relationship between school funding and student learning outcomes. And because school funding enables everything from adequate staff-to-student ratios to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to essential structural repairs, it’s undeniably a student safety issue.
To rank school funding, NPE looked at the following metrics from the Education Law Center, which issues an annual school funding report: funding levels (cost-adjusted, per-pupil revenue from state and local sources), funding distribution (how states allocate funds to high-needs schools serving economically disadvantaged students), and funding effort (the relationship between a state’s GDP and its investment in schools). They also looked at average teacher salaries, adjusted for each state’s cost of living.
The states that earned the most points for funding public education and narrowing resource discrepancies were New York, New Jersey, and Wyoming. Florida lost every single available point for school funding, while Arizona, Idaho, and Nevada lost all but one. Washington, DC, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all stand out for having exceptionally low teacher pay despite relatively high per-pupil spending.
It’s important to recognize that numerous GOP-controlled states are in the process of defunding their public schools — through spending cuts and policies that drain public coffers by enabling skyrocketing voucher costs coupled with generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. If this experiment is allowed to continue, it will ultimately disfigure the landscape of community life and civic participation.
Freedom to Teach and Learn
Because the right-wing attacks on students and educators have ramped up in conjunction with efforts to defund public schools and boost private alternatives, this NPE report card includes a new category, Freedom to Teach and Learn, which encompasses a range of factors pertaining to student safety and well-being: laws protecting LGBTQ students in public schools, corporal punishment bans, censorship and curriculum bans, collective bargaining for teachers, and teacher quality…..
[Please open the link to read the rest of this important article.]
The Republican candidate for Governor in North Carolina is Mark Robinson, who is currently Lt. Governor. He just won the Republican primary, which says a lot about the state party. Robinson is a Black man, and there is a long list of groups that he is denounced.
Faced with questions about whether he is antisemitic, homophobic, anti-Muslim and misogynistic, Robinson, who is Black, naturally responded by arguing that, actually, he is the real victim of bigotry.
When Kirk asked why Robinson believes he’s such a threat to the “MSNBC crowd,” the candidate cried racism. According to Robinson, liberals are only reminding people of his extremism because they fear a Black man holding power in the Republican Party might appeal to disaffected Black voters in the Democratic Party.
He said:
In my case, what they really see is they see a candidate that is able to reach out to those folks, bring common sense solutions to the problems they face, and then they see someone who looks like them and ultimately what happens there is we get into office and there’s success, and all of a sudden voting dynamics in North Carolina are changing for decades. And quite possibly, it starts across the nation. They’re very afraid of that. They don’t want that to happen. They cannot have a conservative Black man at the helm in North Carolina or in any state. Because it’s gonna show the great results of what president Trump did at the national level.
(Robinson has conceded at times that he wrote posts that were “poorly worded” but claims that they were not antisemitic.)
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As for Robinson’s supposed strategy, there’s no evidence he has any sort of broad appeal among Black voters. In his 2020 lieutenant governor’s race, his opponent won, by a large margin, all of the majority-Black counties in the state. Robinson is, however,the type of candidate Republicans like to prop up to give voters the impression that far-right ideals have valence among Black folks — Black men in particular.
But the fact that he’s shrouding himself in victimhood, portraying himself as some sort of Black icon under attack from leftists, suggests he recognizes that the remarks may be hurting him in the general election. And he’s looking for some way — any way — to get past them.
If the biggest charter chain in Texas is under investigation for financial finagling, is it the right time to let that charter chain expand? Well, it’s Texas, so of course!
The Network for Public Education thinks that’s a rotten idea. It’s wrong. It’s unethical. so we issued this press release.
Texas Ed Department Approves Scandal-ridden Charter Chain’s Expansion
For immediate release:
Within days of appointing conservators to manage the IDEA charter chain, the Texas Education Agency gives it the green light to expand.
There is a major financial and ethical charter scandal in Texas, and the Network for Public Education is outraged. The same day that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced the appointment of a management team for IDEA charter schools following years of inappropriate spending, the charter chain submitted a request for a massive expansion that would add ten new charter campuses in Texas.
On March 6, the TEA announced it appointed two conservators to oversee IDEA charter schools following its investigation into multiple allegations of financial mishandling. Two days later, the TEA approved that expansion without public comment or meaningful notice.
The charter chain obtained nearly $300,000,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to expand to 123 schools. Following an audit, the Department is now demanding that IDEA return $28 million to be paid using Texas taxpayer dollars.
NPE President Diane Ravitch has been following the charter chain’s scandals for years. “The IDEA charter chain has a long-established reputation for spending millions on luxury items for its leaders while paying executives private-sector salaries. The grifting at public expense must stop. When one Houston school received failing grades, TEA took over the entire district. In this case, TEA appointed a conservator from another charter chain and then approved IDEA’s expansion in a shady insider deal.”
According to Network for Public Education Executive Director Carol Burris, “The scandals involving this federal Charter School Program (CSP) recipient are breathtaking. As shocking as seems, it is possible this new expansion of the corrupt IDEA charter chain will be financed through CSP grant money. We all foot the bill.”
The Network for Public Education is a national advocacy group whose mission is to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen public schools for current and future generations of students.
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Mailing Address:
Network for Public Education PO Box 227 New York City, NY 10156
State Senator Tina Bojanowski, teacher and legislator (@TinaforKentucky), tweeted:
KY House passes HB2, a bill to change our Constitution to allow vouchers and charters by creating an amendment that allows future legislation to disregard SEVEN sections of our Constitution. @kyhousedems
Joel, our reader who often comments on economic issues, is a union electrician, now retired. Here he weighs in on the subject of “good jobs.”
Joel writes:
Most of what Americans call good Jobs never existed. What existed was good Unions which made bad Jobs good. And that only for a brief period of time. From the 1930s thru the 1960s.
In 1906 Upton Sinclair described Meat Packing as “The Jungle.” By the 50s it was a desired job that could let the holder buy a house, go on vacations and send a child to a State School. The blood and stench washed off in the shower after 8 hours. Henry Ford was not a benevolent innovative mogul of American industry who paid his workers more so they could buy his product as the myth goes. The Nazi loving antisemite could not get skilled carriage builders to work on the monotonous assembly lines of his Model T. He had to raise wages.
The assembly line took the skills out of manufacturing. Far easier and cheaper to find a worker able to put the left front wheel on all day than one who can craft a carriage from soup to nuts. Ford after the most violent resistance to Unions was the last Auto maker to be Organized in the 40s after his thugs got featured on the front page of the Detroit Press brutally beating Union organizers. They seem to have missed a roll of film when the Press Photographer handed them his Camera. Having thrown the roll away before being stopped.
Unions grew from 5% of the private sector workforce in the mid to late 1920s before the Great Depression and the NLRA. Grown to between 31 -33% in the early 50s. Which essentially meant most larger firms. And if a firm was not organized there was a Union knocking on the door that forced them to treat Workers with some degree of respect. With better wages benefits and conditions. All this started changing in the late 40s after Taft Hartley eviscerated the NLRA. Almost immediately Corporations started moving Manufacturing to the Anti Union South. Turning the manufacturing Belt of the North into the Rust Belt from Lowell Ma. and Binghamton NY to Milwaukee Wisconsin. A time when Robbie the Robot was only in a Movie and on Lost in Space. That long before Foriegn Competition and out sourcing work. It took 30 years to move the American manufacturing Industry away from the North to the Non Union South. It took 10 years to move much of it out of the country to even lower priced more abusive Countries with no Labor Standards. A different issue was found in Coal mining where strip mining decimated the Unions. Of course the UMW under short sighted and criminal thugs like Tony Boyle had fought the environmentalists opposed to it. No major mine in WV is now Union. The state once the home of the UMW is now Right to Work.
But what about those “White Collar ” Jobs. Jobs that may require a College degree. C.W. Mills in the very early 50s postulated that because the Jobs required selling services and themselves. White collar workers felt more self reliant than Blue. Viewed themselves as individuals with valuable skills that others did not posses. Skills to be marketed to the highest bidder. So who needs a Union. With some disdain he also notes that, that ethos got them lower pay and benefits. An Electrical Engineer often paid less than the Electricians he handed the prints to. Possibly one day acquiring a management position. Most often not.
Through the 60s the presence of strong Unions always knocking on the door was a check on Corporate treatment of White Collar workers. The attitude from the CEO of IBM as he addressed the Public or a Shareholder meeting . “Here at IBM we are a family here to serve our Employees, our Costumers , the Public and our Shareholders.”
As Unions were eviscerated workers Blue and White collar were taken out of the stump speech as well as Costumers and the Public. Jack Welch said in the mid 80s “tell the Unions the Future of GE is in Mexico”. By 2006 IBM was dropping their defined benefit pension for White collar Workers and later taking away the matching 401k, capping it at 5%. The age of shareholder primacy was born as Unions disappeared. Back to under 6% of the private sector workforce.
When I learned about this list of honorees, I thought it was a joke. It’s not.
An award named for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, an icon of liberalism and feminism, will be presented to a surprising list of men and women by the Opperman Foundation at the Library of Congress.
A prestigious honor named after liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and originally established to recognize “women of distinction” is being awarded this year to a surprising group of multiple genders that includes Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and Martha Stewart, among others.
The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award, also known as the RBG Award, will be presented by the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation at an April 13 gala at the Library of Congress, ITK can reveal.
In addition to conservative media mogul Murdoch, Tesla CEO and X owner Musk, and lifestyle guru Stewart, the award will be given to actor Sylvester Stallone and financier Michael Milken.
First established in 2020 as a recognition solely for women, previous recipients of the RBG Award have included Queen Elizabeth II, singer Barbra Streisand and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.
But this year, organizers expanded the award named after the liberal leader of the Supreme Court to include “trailblazing men and women” who “have demonstrated extraordinary accomplishments in their chosen fields.”
Dwight D. Opperman Foundation chair Julie Opperman said in a statement that Ginsburg “fought not only for women but for everyone.”
The Supreme Court justice, a champion of women’s rights, died in 2020 at 87.
“Going forward, to embrace the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy, we honor both women and men who have changed the world by doing what they do best,” Opperman said.
Tom Ultican left private industry to teach physics and advanced mathematics in San Diego public schools. He has become a specialist in dissecting phony attacks on public schools. In this excellent post, he takes a look at “learning loss,” a favorite subject of reformers. Of course, students did not learn as much during the pandemic as they would have if they were in classrooms daily. It was hardly surprising that in the wake of a once-in-a-century worldwide health crisis, students’ lives were disrupted.
Ultican writes:
Crazy pants Eric Hanushek claims COVID “learning-loss” could cost American students $31 trillion in future earnings. He burst onto the education world’s conscientiousness with his 1981 paper, claiming “there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.” This played well with billionaires from the Walton family but had no relationship with reality. Likewise, his January 2024 “learning-loss” claims were straight up baloney.
Learning-Loss Reality
In the summer and fall of 2020, NWEA, McKinsey, CREDO and others produced unfounded analysis of looming learning-loss disaster caused by school closures. Since there was no data, summer learning-loss was used as a proxy, a bad one. In 2019, Paul von Hippel’s investigation threw great doubt on the 1982 Baltimore study that powerfully supported summer learning-loss belief. He showed using modern testing analysis, learning-loss was doubtful and in some cases, students gained during the summer. This data, used to trumpet a national education crisis, had no validity.
Unfortunately, billionaire-financed organizations, out to undermine public schools, do not care.
From March 2020 to February 2021, almost a half-million people died of COVID-19. There were no vaccines or Paxlovid type drugs. Refrigerator trucks stored dead bodies and more than 2 million Americans were hospitalized, some on ventilators for months. Schools were closed; unemployment jumped to 15%, murder rates shot up by 30% and fear was rampant.
In this environment, teachers heroically switched to online education.
K-12 students lost parents, became isolated from friends and visited family members in hospitals. Many kids struggled with online classes over inadequate internet feeds, parents were losing jobs and children could not visit grandparents.
Of course the rates of learning decreased but less than one might expect.
The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 8th grade data graphs above show a modest decrease in both math and reading scores between 2019 and 2022. Reading fell by three points and math by eight points on a 500 point scale. I do not see catastrophe in these declines because given the context of the pandemic they strike me as rather small, with no signs of pending economic collapse.
Students have been out of school for months with medical or other reasons. I and others with this experience can testify that we were able to recover quickly. Claiming learning-loss disaster from COVID shutdown does not make sense.
Another interesting result from the 2022 NAEP test data comes from Commissioner Peggy Carr of the National Center for Education Statistics. She said, “There’s nothing in this data that tells us there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.”
To add further weight, New York Times opinion writer David Wallace-Wells wrote:
“In New York City, the nation’s largest school district, schools reopened in September 2020. There, average scores for reading fell by about a point for fourth graders and improved by about a point for eighth graders; in math, fourth-grade scores fell by nine points (statewide scores fell by 12) and eighth-grade scores fell by four points (statewide scores fell by six). In Los Angeles, the second-largest district, schools stayed closed through January 2021. There, average scores actually improved in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math and eighth-grade reading, where they improved by a robust nine points (to 257 from 248). Scores fell only in fourth-grade math (to 220 from 224).”
“Despite the lack of improvement during 2022-23 on assessments provided by NWEA and Curriculum Associates, we find that student achievement did improve between Spring 2022 and Spring 2023: in fact, students recovered approximately one-third of the original loss in math (0.17 grade levels out of the 0.53 grade levels decline from 2019-2022) and one quarter of the loss in reading (0.08 grade levels out of the 0.31 grade level decline from 2019-2022). Such improvements in grade levels in a single school year mean that students learned 117 percent in math and 108 percent in reading of what they would typically have learned in a pre-pandemic school year. These gains are large relative to historical changes in math and reading achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.”
George Bush’s Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling, says, “We’re slowly recovering, but not fast enough.” That is from the woman who claimed 100% of America’s students would be above average by 2014. Without being a statistician, it never rang true to me. Her failure to recognize the great work of public schools says she has an agenda…
Learning-loss is not the big danger facing America’s students. The real danger is the likes of McKinsey, NWEA, CREDO and research leaders like Eric Hanushek.
Cameron Vickrey is communications and development director for Fellowship Southwest; she previously worked for Pastors for Texas children. She is a pastor, her father was a pastor, her husband is a pastor. She believes in separation of church and state. She believes in the importance of public schools. She does not want to impose her views on others.
Any time you are quoted on Twitter, you have to brace yourself for the subsequent comments. Especially if Pastors for Children is the one quoting you.
Their Twitter account is a favorite of trolls (education reformers, neo-libertarians and Christian nationalists) who believe that God is not in the public schools and the only way forward is to tear it all down.
So, I knew there would be pushback when I said this, and it was referenced in a tweet: “If you can, send your children to public schools … because it’s not just about my kids, it’s about what’s good for all kids.”
The replies were predictable and entertaining, although plenty were also disturbing.
Some comments satirically quoted what Jesus definitely did not ever say, like: “‘Let Romans indoctrinate your children.’ – Jesus.” Or, “‘Send your kids to government schools so they will worship the state.’ – Jesus.”
These don’t bother me. Their absurdity speaks louder than any rebuttal would. But there were two Twitter comments that I do want to address.
This one, although asked in the manner of how the Pharisees questioned Jesus, warrants an honest reply: “What is your spiritual justification for this?”
Without knowing exactly to what this question refers, I’m going to assume it’s the claim that as Christians, we should send our children to public school.
Theologically, I believe that God loves every child equally and abundantly. We have denied some children their share of this abundant life by hoarding privileges like education.
If I really believe, and I do, that God loves other peoples’ children the same way that God loves my children and wants the same abundance for their lives, then I should make sure my desire for my children’s success doesn’t come at the expense of someone else’s children.
Now, how could where I send my kids to school ever affect another child’s success or opportunity?
Unfortunately, at least in Texas, public schools are paid for by property taxes and distributed largely by something called average daily attendance funding. So, if you live in a neighborhood with lower property tax rates and lower cost of housing, that school will receive a smaller share of the public education dollars from the state.
Now, there are work-arounds to this, called recapture (a.k.a Robin Hood). But there are many inequities that haven’t been addressed in our funding system, and it’s simply obvious to anyone driving around that the wealthier the neighborhood is, the nicer the school is.
If that school is lower-income, lower-performing or simply hasn’t had a renovation bond passed on their behalf in a few decades, then it’s likelier that families who are zoned there and can opt out will do so.
Because schools receive a certain number of dollars per child counted present each day (or an average of the days), if your child isn’t counted there, then the school is missing out on that money. And if, instead, your child is attending a different public or charter school, that money goes with them.
It’s especially tough for schools who see a mass exodus of students across a few years, like when a shiny new charter school opens nearby. The neighborhood public school might lose a few students from each of their classrooms, but not enough to consolidate classes or reduce any overhead costs.
Essentially, their income is reduced while their expenses stay the same, and they are financially pinched. When a school is financially pinched, it has to cut enrichment programming, the same programs the new charter schools often advertise — like fine arts, gardening or STEM — thereby lowering the quality of that schools’ education.
So, yes, it really does matter to other children which school you choose.
Let’s say you are now with me in supporting our neighborhood public schools. That brings me to the next tweet I want to address: “Any church that follows God doesn’t hesitate to call out the demonic forces within public education. Public Education seeks to separate children from God at almost every turn. Millstones for thy necks.”
Although it is very tempting to accept this challenge and call out the demonic forces within public education, which I absolutely can do [hint: candidates for school boards who don’t seem to care about education], I am going to try to follow Jesus and resist.
God is in all schools with all children. If you are wondering, here’s where I’ve specifically seen God in neighborhood public schools:
God is in the kindergarten teacher who nurtures the little ones and patiently listens to their endless commentary on life.
God is in the fifth-grade teachers who play guitar, build robots and order class snakes for their students who are otherwise not as engaged.
God is in the elementary school that also serves as the regional school for the deaf and hard of hearing, and in the hearing-kids who learn sign language to talk with their classmates.
God is in the schools when nearby church members participate in mentoring programs and form friendships with kids who don’t have very many adult role models.
God is in the schools when volunteers come to deliver food for the weekend to kids who can’t otherwise depend on food being in their home.
God is in the middle school girl who makes room for a new student at her lunch table.
God is in the discussions that happen in middle and high school English and history classes, where kids learn to listen to one another and respect each others’ opinions.
God is in the moment of silence observed at the beginning of each day after the pledges of allegiance, when many children bow their heads to pray.
If you still believe that God isn’t in the public schools, then maybe that’s exactly where God is calling you to go.
I watched clips of yesterday’s hearings about the report of Robert Hur, who was selected by Merrick Garland to be Special Counsel to investigate Biden and documents found in his home and offices. The big takeaway from his voluminous report was that he considered Biden’s memory to be weak and that a jury would treat him as a kindly old man with a poor memory.
Republicans wanted to use the hearings to demonstrate that Biden is senile. Democrats wanted to use the hearings to show that Trump has a worse memory than Biden and that—unlike Biden— he willfully retained top-secret documents and refused to return them.
Hur resigned from the Department of Justice the day before the hearing and hired a Trump insider to represent him.
Mary Trump includes in her post the video introduced by Eric Swalwell. It shows Trump in numerous gaffes, memory lapses, and moments of incoherence. Trump later claimed all the clips were generated by AI.
Not included is the question posed by Eric Swalwell that was shown last night on Laurence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show. Swallwell read the transcript of Hur’s interview and quoted it. At one point, the transcript says, Hur observed that Biden had “a photographic memory” of the layout of his home. Not a sign of a poor memory. Apparently the transcript portrayed Biden differently than Hur’s report.
One of the Republicans read the dictionary definition of senile and asked Hur if he believed Biden was senile. Hur did not.
The question I kept wondering was why Merrick Garland thought that it was a good idea to select a trusted Trump appointee to investigate Biden.
Diane Ravitch's blog 